LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

- 
efra|t.._. jft^B....... 



I'XITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



.*\ 



-' 



JESUITS! 



By PAUL FEVAL. 



From the Tenth. French. Edition., 



By T. F. Galwey. 




BALTIMORE: 

Published by John Murphy & Co. 

182 Baltimore Street. 
1879. 



The Library 

op Congress 

WASHINGTON 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1878, by 

JOHN MURPHY, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

It happened one day that a Wolf and a Lamb came 
at the same time to quench their thirst at a clear run- 
ning brook. The Wolf, that was further up stream, 
having a mind to quarrel with the Lamb, asked what 
he meant by disturbing the water and making it so 
muddy as to be unfit to drink. The Lamb meekly 
replied that there must be a mistake, as the water he 
was drinking came down to him from where the Wolf 
was. "You are a rascal anyway, 11 said the Wolf, 
" and I hear that you slandered me six months ago. 11 
"Really,'' 1 said the Lamb, " that, too, is a mistake, for it 
is not so long since I was born. 11 But the Wolf, finding 
himself unable to argue with any success, fell into a 
great rage, and, growling between his fierce teeth, "If 
it was not you it was your father, and that is all one, 11 
sprang upon the innocent creature and made a meal of 
him. 

No doubt there will be many a knowing smile at the 
comparison of a Jesuit to a lamb, as though the com- 
parison in this wise were manifestly absurd. Yet the 
same incredulous smiler would have his suspicions 
violently aroused if he saw a mild and unresisting 
old man dragged to the bar of justice by a gang of 

3 



TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 



common ruffians and law-breakers. Well, it is a 
notorious fact, that the most selfish, as well as the 
vilest of men, from the sardonic aristocrats, who hat- 
tened in the infamous luxury of the Bourbon courts, 
to the inhuman wretches icho made a carnival of hor- 
rors under the Commune of Paris in 1870, have been 
outspoken and bitter enemies of the Jesuits. 

Thank God, we Americans have been exempt from 
the violent outbursts that have periodically shaken 
Europe during the last hundred years. And we are 
bound, as thoughtful men, to turn a deaf ear to the 
often repeated and as often refuted charges that are 
made against the illustrious Company of Jesus, when 
we remember the character of its traducers and remem- 
ber, too, that this Company has had in France alone, 
either dfe members or as pupils, such men as Descartes, 
Corneille, Kircher, Montesquieu, the great Conde, 
Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Bosco- 
vich, aye, and Voltaire himself. Our own Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton was proud to owe his educa- 
tion to the Jesuits. 

M. Feval is a prolific writer and needs no intro- 
duction to those who are acquainted with the French 
literature of the day, but for the benefit of such as do 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



not know him, it may be as well to say that he is the 
author o/Les Mysteres de Londres, Les Contesde Bre- 
tagne, L'Homme de Fer, Chateaupauvre, and more 
recently Les Etapes d'une Conversion. M. Feval, 
until lately, was not what would be called a clerical — 
far from it. As he himself says, he was an intimate 
friend of Eugene Sue, and his first connection with 
the Jesuit controversy was as an antagonist of the 
Society. 

The Author's description of the foundation of that 
Society is skilful and picturesque, as might be expected 
from so experienced a writer, but it is true to history, 
and cannot be read without a better appreciation of 
the noble career of the much vilified organization. 

The saintly heroism of Francis Xavier, the keen, 
persevering devotion of the wonderful Ricci, the quiet, 
courageous and single-hearted missionary work of the 
Society in Asia and America, are all strikingly pic- 
tured. Ghoiseul in France, Pombal in Portugal, 
Aranda in Spain, and the smaller diplomatists of 
Parma and of Naples, are faithfully portrayed, per- 
haps as they never were before. 

The Translator is sanguine enough to consider the 
work a complete answer to one class of the accusations 



6 TRANS LA TOR'S PRE FA GE. 



that are wont to be made against the Society of Jesus. 
If the English translation shall prove at all compa- 
rable to the French of the original — which is hardly to 
be hoped — the reader ivill not doze during its perusal. 
The Translator begs to remind the reader that the 
book beijig originally addressed to Frenchmen, there- 
fore, largely overlooks the cruel and wanton persecu- 
tions directed against the Society of Jesus throughout 
the British dominions in former days. The many 
strictures on the animus of the encyclopaedias relate 
of course to those of (he Author's own country, but they 
will be useful to remember when consulting ivorks of 
reference in other languages. 

T. F. G. 

Cleveland, Ohio, November, 1878. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

A Preliminary Chat, 9 

The First Vow, , 65 

The First Fathers, 113 

A Glance at the Missions, 147 

In France, 183 

Pombal, 227 

Choiseul, D'Aranda, Tanucci, A Simple Glance, . . 279 
A Last Word, 323 



JESUITS ! 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 



They knelt down and Ignatius prayed thus : " God ! grant 
that the house of Thy servants may he built not for themselves 
alone, but for others, so that, having given their life for the 
salvation of men in Jesus Christ, they may never cease to be 
persecuted for Thy greater glory, who livest and reignest, 
world without end. Amen." And having made the sign of 
the cross, they arose. 



This has been a brilliant century. When I came 
up from my province, I fell into the middle of 
sparkling skepticism, where the eyes were dazzled 
by the incessant flashes of wit. My charming com- 
panions were engaged in publishing newspapers or 
in managing theatres. 

One of them, the great Boniface of the Constitu- 
tionnel, was so given to the welfare of his country 
2 9 



10 JESUITS. 



as to invent the sea-serpent. I remember Gavarni 
once said to an intimate friend of this great Boni- 
face and of M. Thiers : " People will go so far one 
of these days, perhaps, as to think about the good 
God." 

That caused a laugh. It was in the time of Louis 
Philippe : to speak about God without laughing was 
considered heroically courageous. The poor God ! 
Why, Beranger's songs had exiled him to Yvetot 
forever. 

When the sea-serpent had died of old age, Roque- 
plan was the first to suggest that the Jesuits might 
take the place of the illustrious beast with great ad- 
vantage. 

" Gloomy characters, and they're worn out !" re- 
plied the giant Boniface, whom posterity will never 
properly appreciate. 

But Jerome Paturot was no longer amusing, and 
the feuilleton-uovel was just beginning to appear. 
Good-natured, portly Doctor Veron wanted a sensa- 
tion. He said nothing to Boniface, but set himself 
to thinking. He it was who had concocted the Pdte 
Regnault, invented the Revue, and governed the 
Opera. He was a man of science and was not a 
raw doctor. His specialty was fattening ideas which 
he bought lean in the market. 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 11 



Jesuits ! that name, which is gathering in sound, 
and is heard everywhere now, is intimately asso- 
ciated with my first hopes of fortune, with my ear- 
liest literary recollections. I believe I was pre- 
destined to write a book on this subject, which 
renews its youth, for I began one a good while ago 
and I am now thinking of writing at least two. If 
it is true that there is a legend to every book, 
habent sua fata f then the story of mine will per- 
haps seem strange. 



12 JESUITS! 



II. 



I was still young in literature ; I ran wildly about 
after popular success, and I won it to a degree; I 
had my day, like another, in the society of my 
associates and friends, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, 
Frederick SouliS, Eugene Sue. 

This last had just published the Wandenng Jew, 
which, after all was merely an idea of Roqueplan s 
fattened by Dr. Veron and baked according to 
orders Dr. Veron had nothing against the Jesu.ts, 
nor had Eugene Sue. Dr. Veron was a thorough- 
paced bourgeois, with a double chin and a triple 
belly ; he had a lively horror of revolutions, and .n 
the interest of his business he helped revolution 
without being aware of it: an extreme conservafst, 
he yet dealt in all the materials that build barn- 
cades- he was like those unyielding manufacturers 
who unpave the streets of the city, burn palaces, 
and profane churches; not with their own hands, 
great God ! Oh, no, they are too prudent for that ; 
but by the manufacture of petroleum, wh.ch they 
sell every day. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 13 



A man of intelligence, too, though he had small 
regard for spelling ; of some wit ; giving remarka- 
ble dinners, and disapproving, as perhaps unneces- 
sary, of any assassination of an Archbishop. He 
has left nephews. 

Eug&ne Sue was very different. Though far 
below Balzac as a painter, or Alexandre Dumas as 
a story teller, he had an undeniable skill in the pre- 
sentation of his characters. For a moment he had 
been admitted to the exclusive society of the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain, and he showed himself vain of 
it; why he left it I cannot say, but his portraits 
of that society are so dark and spiteful, that the idea 
of some personal difficulty naturally arises : Prince 
Eugene, too, is said to have passed over to the 
enemy from a fit of the pouts. 

Eugene Sue was one of the most pronounced 
aristocrats I have ever met: a real Sybarite, who 
was tortured by the fold of a rose-leaf. When the 
enormous success of the Mysteries of Paris had given 
him over to the democracy, Doctor V6ron said to 
him : " There is a fortune to be made in attacking 
the Jesuits." And he laid a hundred thousand- 
franc notes on the table. 

That is the history of the Wandering Jew, related 
by Dr. Yeron, himself, in the Constitutionnel, and 
2* 



14 JESUITS! 

that was the lofty philosophy which directed the 
contrivance for mowing Jesuits : Doctor Veron after- 
wards freely confessed that the dearly bought scythe 
had mown nothing at all, unless it might be the 

subscribers. 

And now let me relate an anecdote about myseli. 
At the height of the din caused by the feuilleton and 
its children, who were laying about with their rods 
on the bushes supposed to contain St. Ignatius, I had 
a visit from the manager of a very great Parisian 
journal, who said to me, too: "There is a fortune 
to be made with the Jesuits." 

When I objected that the Constitutionnel had got 
the start, he shrugged his shoulders, and replied : 
« It is old, worn-out matter, nothing but an ap- 
peal to the old hatred of priests. We want some- 
thing different, and I have bought a warehouse 

full." 

And he added in a tone of confidence, " I have 
a room full of documents: five manuscripts relat- 
ing to Father Guignard and to Jean Chatel, a 
thundering exposure of the Gunpowder Plot, the 
details of the persecutions directed against that 
unfortunate Abbe, St. Cyran, cooped up in the 
castle of Yincennes, two unpublished volumes of 
the first Arnauld, heavy, but full of spleen, a proc- 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 15 



lamatioD of Titus Oates, a dispatch of the Due de 
Cr6qui, a letter of F6nelon's, three of the Regent's, 
and two good ones, there they are ! of the Cardinal 
de Noailles: and Fve got all of the Pombal busi- 
ness, a wonderful affair ! Ah ! that scoundrel of a 
Malagrida ! and that poor thing, the Marchioness 
of Tavora ! but perhaps it was the other woman. 
An immense portfolio belonging to Choiseul, con- 
taining the consultations of the Jansenist lawyers, 
and more than a hundred lines of notes in Madame 
de Pompadour's own hand, authentic, and enamelled 
with gay little smirtches! what do you think of it? 
And a very funny, really moral note from Louis 
XV, with an entire page scrawled by the historical 
quill of M. de Chalotais, of which Voltaire said : 
'That trifle is stronger than Archimedes' lever, for 
it has upset the world, without a point of support ! ? 
We shall give a facsimile of the page, and at the 
foot a portrait of the quill. In fact, I have a treas- 
ure, a mine, a quarry ! and I offer you ." 

But hush ! It is of little moment what he offered 
me: I was not worth much. I was only twenty- 
five, and vainer than any peacock you could find. 
I was carried away by excitement and even by 
scandal, which I very innocently took to be glory. 
I knew the Jesuits only through Provinciates and 



16 JESUITS! 



the Encyclopaedia : I accepted the offer with a lively 
determination to mow more thoroughly than Eugene 
Sue had done, or at least to glean all that his engine 
had left standing in the field of Loyola. 

Behold me then, at work ! and with a will ! And 
truly the manager of the great daily had not mis- 
led me, for he had treasures of papers, cases of 
pamphlets, and great heaps of what he took delight 
in calling " documents." All day long, the men of 
his establishment made journeys between his office 
and me with fragments of Jesuits under their arms, 
in baskets, in napkins : our manager came with 
his pockets full; and in addition to all this, he 
wrote me letters that were so heavy as to have four 
stamps; the post-office would carry nothing heavier! 

Our manager was not a great scholar, but he 
was so good-natured ! and so positive ! and so 
savage in our undertaking ! I remember an ex- 
pression of his, written on a card accompanying 
some scribbling attributed to Mme. de Pompa- 
dour : " traced by that hand of velvet 

(velours) which atoned for Latude, by caressing 
Voltaire ! n Well, he was drawn in a vague, sad 
sort of way towards style ! But velours was written 
without s. He and I w T orked like negroes for a 
month : he especially. I am not sure but his ter- 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 17 



rific passion was directed more against Eugene Sue 
and the Constitutionnel y than against the Jesuits. 
He became so embittered in the work, that he used 
to fancy every morsel of Jesuit served out to appease 
the craving of the Constitutionnel' 's subscribers, was a 
palatable tid-bit that Doctor Ve>on had snatched 
from his mouth. " Let us begin to appear," he said 
to me with tears in his eyes, " let us begin at once, 
or there will be nothing left ! " 

What a mistake ! There was still something left, 
and something will always be left, for after thirty 
years have passed, four or five hundred thousand 
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen breakfast every morn- 
ing on the meats which were first cooked by Eugene 
Sue, and have since been stewed and made over into 
hash in the miserable little skillets which replace 
his generous kettle of Christian flesh. 

At the end of a month, I wrote to our excellent 
manager one fine spring morning: "I am going 
to Brittany, and I have thrown the sheets of our 
book into the fire. Pardon me for returning your 
'documents' and your money, but I find that I 
undertook in a trifling way, and ignorantly, a task 
that does not become an honorable writer, and 
though I am utterly indifferent as far as religion 
goes, I am as careful of my literary honesty as I 



18 JESUITS: 



am of the apple of my eye. Understand, I am not 
attacking others' honor or honesty: opinions are 
free : I speak for myself alone. 

" I have delayed longer than was necessary per- 
haps in writing yon this, but I was anxious to keep 
my promise if possible. I have found out by read- 
ing your own ( documents/ that I had undertaken to 
calumniate for so much a Hoe, men who are not only 
innocent of all crime, but are useful citizens, bene- 
factors of mankind, soldiers of science, peaceful con- 
querors, apostles, heroes, saints whose only fault is 
having excelled all other bodies of men in bringing 
out by the strength of their arms, their sweat, their 
blood itself, what is perhaps the most astonishing 
work of civilization in modern times. All this I 
have read in your own house in one of D'Alem- 
bert's beautiful pages. Certainly such a task cannot 
be suitable for me." 

I wrote those lines thirty years before my conver- 
sion. 

You shall see that our manager was not a difficult 
man. While I was busy with my trunks, he burst 
into my room like a bombshell, and, almost before 
he was over the threshold, broke out : 

" Bravo ! You are on the right track ! You see 
things from au original point of view ! We shall 



A PRELIMINAR Y GHA T. 19 



make the sensation of the day ! At all events, they 
will not accuse us of keeping in the wake of the 
Constitution ael ! You know the religious sentiment 
is not dead. Why, my wife hankers after holy 
water, and I think a man can never be much out 
of the way in trusting to the feminine instinct. So 
here goes, then, for our new manoeuvre. Change 
direction to the right ! and then forward along the 
whole line ! But then we shall have to be serious 
about this ! We must not indulge too much in play- 
ful humor. We shall turn the Provinciates inside 
out ! But no offensive language, mind; that sort of 
thing has had its day ! a dignified impertinence ! 
And documents ! Facts, my boy, facts ! some wit, 
the Devil himself! powder, torpedoes, a few martyrs, 
not too many, you know; a great many good-looking 
people, the deacon Paris, if need be. And soldiers, 
headstrong fellows, but honorable ! Excitement ! 
passion ! drums and trumpets ! Ten volumes ! or 
fifteen ! or twenty ! That funny little note of yours 
can be put in as a sort of introduction. Fll give it 
back to you, so that you can fix it up, and spice it, 
and lengthen it a little. I tell you what, I think 
thifc is a capital idea. A young writer sets himself 
to work to destroy those modern vampires, the 
Jesuits, who have been so awkwardly attacked by 



20 JESUITS! 



an organ of the old school of liberalism, giving its 
readers their fill of worn-out lies and exploded cal- 
umnies, and who suddenly discovers — I mean the 
young writer — that Rodin is a noble exponent of 
the principles of '89, and that Father d'Aigrigny 
was playing with Eugene Sue when he passed him- 
self off for a meek sufferer. It is a great idea ! it is 
magnificent ! Of course it don't agree exactly with 
the politics of our paper, but then we must try to 
keep a little on all sides at once, and, besides, a little 
bit of paradox is always agreeable — and here is the 
title : Rodin's Revenge ! Ten thousand dollars for 
advertisement! Walking-signboards on all the 
boulevards; a direct challenge to Voltaire! We 
shall send up advertising balloons that will shower 
our prospectuses broadcast ! Beranger will be an 
old song ! We shall have troops of equestrians to 
distribute our dodgers ! And the clergy will be 
with us! And little circulars, neatly got up, you 
know, with an engraving, must be left at every 
house in the Xth arondissement ! And perhaps we 
can get the Jesuits themselves to work for us — 
they're a deep lot, you know ! They will give us 
one of their gallions, loaded to the water's edge with 
quadruple pistoles, worth 87 francs, 38 centimes 
apiece, and a draft for five hundred thousand rupees 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 21 



on one of their banks in Camboge, or Bimilipatum, 
or Ellisheepoor. What do you think of that?" 

All this was said with a laugh, so as not to com- 
promise himself too much, even with me. But you 
know the laugh of an editor-in-chief, who is beating 
the bushes and not very sure whether an elephant 
or a hare will pop into view. Under his irony 
there was an emotion that could turn into enthu- 
siasm. His paper was a great one, but new. He 
could set his sail to any wind, that was likely to 
be a favorable one. And, of course, the principles 
of ? 89 have never interfered with a speculation; 
quite the contrary. 

While he was indulging in his cackling, there 
was passing before my eyes all that I had found in 
his "documents": the humble and magnificent pro- 
cession of those great men who, since the first years 
of the XVIth century, whether conquerors or mar- 
tyrs, have bared their breasts to all sorts of lies, and 
tyrannies, and opposition, and ferocity, and beast- 
liness, and I asked myself, how could any one make 
up the character of that evil-minded little monster 
of a Rodin out of the knightly Loyola, or Francis 
Xavier, the miraculous apostle of tenderness ; Can- 
isius, the oracle; the brilliant Laynez; Cardinal 
Toledo, who gave absolution and the crown of 
3 



22 JESUITS! 



France to the best of our kings ; Matthew Ricci, 
who overcame the impossible; Claver, slave of the 
slaves; Francis Regis, Ravignan — but why name 
them? There is not room enough for them here, 
and indeed the list of their heroic names would take 
many a page; names of statesmen like Bellarmin, 
names of orators like Bourdaloue, names of savants, 
of fathers of the Church, of luminous masters; true 
friends and benefactors of youth, who put the spirits 
of darkness to flight, though the imps made use of 
the old trick of crying " Stop thief " as they scamp- 
ered away. 

I asked myself, what sort of rage is it that makes 
the enemies of truth deceive the herd, and what sort 
of curse has seized the crowd that they depend upon 
the orbs of blind men, instead of turning their own 
eyes towards the blazing light of evidence. 

I said to myself, it would be of some use, and easy 
enough, too, to call out " take care" to the fools who 
are hoodwinked with the rags of sophistry and are 
reeling and staggering in the mud of their ignorance 
as they wend their way to the cabaret to take part 
in its enlightened discussions. It would be useful ; 
there is not a poor wife of one of those unfortunate 
men, who devour the dry crusts that are left for 
their little one's nourishment, because the philoso- 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 23 



phers have robbed them of their heart when they 
took away their God, not one of those women but 
would thank me. And how easy it would be! 
undeniable facts are plentiful ; they talk, they cry 
out, they glitter in their beauty under the brushwood 
that has been systematically thrown upon them. 
And it would be opportune, for Diogenes has been 
too long strutting about with his lantern, at high 
noon, denying the glorious daylight. And there 
w T ould be something admirable in running the risk 
of being stoned to death by cynicism, by absynth, 
by the burlesque song, by the enormous varieties of 
small trades which deal in vice, in crime, in enerva- 
tion, in defeat, and which would have to shut up 
shop if, by chance, Tom Goodfellow should awake 
some morning with a clear head and a pair of eyes 
of his own. 

All these things passed through my mind, and I 
confused, as you see, the cause of the Jesuits with 
the cause of God, which was, which is, and which 
always will be the cause of the poor man, even in 
spite of the poor fellow himself and his poisoners. 

And yet I let our manager go away full of his 
notion, though perfectly impartial, ready to profit by 
the right or by the left, without love, hate, or con- 
viction, but possessed by an enthusiasm ever ready 



24 JESUITS! 



for anything black or white according to the wind, 
the tide, and the opportunity ; an image of the won- 
derfully empty activity which is the very life of our 
day, at once so intelligent and so cramped. 

I refused to take sides, for the wrong out of hon- 
esty, disgust, and manly honor; for the right out of 
cowardice. I was afraid. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 25 



III. 



I was afraid of falling into bad odor with the 
people who dispense success, and I worshipped suc- 
cess ; my only God was success. I was afraid of my 
enemies, but, above all, I feared my friends. To 
make known all the testimony unwillingly favorable 
to the Jesuits that I had found, while bent on their 
condemnation, amid the heap of papers livid with 
their adversaries' hatred, would have been to "com- 
promise" me for ever. 

My disposition is such that I cannot do things by 
halves. Had I inserted only the tip of my finger, 
I should have thrown myself in bodily. With my 
disposition and the recklessness of my age, at that 
time, I saw that I would be defiantly insulting a 
consecrated iniquity, which had grown into " public 
opinion" since the time of Pascal, the great unfor- 
tunate tool of the Calvinistic treason that dwelt only 
half-concealed beneath the solemn robes of the "sol- 
itaires " of Port Royal. 

This lie, or if we must be polite to those who 
insult us, this error, thanks to the different layers of 
3* 



26 JESUITS! 



opposition that had become a solid residuum forming 
guano during three centuries, had acquired what 
might be called an official sanction ; for the oppo- 
sition always becomes the government in the course 
of time, to teach simpletons that it is in opposition 
for no other purpose than to become the government, 
and that the high sounding phrases by which it pre- 
tends to attack the ills of society contain nothing at 
all but the insanity of a few ambitious fellows who 
overturn the State in order to be able to put on an 
embroidered coat in place of the felon's suit they 
have deserved! this lie, said I, or this error, ap- 
proved in the palaces of kings by their favorites, 
their ministers, by their parliaments, by a portion 
happily small of the clergy, by poets, lawyers, phil- 
osophers, by conceited marquises, by hangers-on, in 
a word, by the opposition of the palace, the bureau, 
or the alley; by all those who delved at revolution 
knowingly, or ignorantly, had appeared to liberal 
people with the form of something so holy as to be 
unassailable. From the doctors who calumniate in 
immense volumes too heavy for a weak man to lift, 
to the devil-may-cares who penny-a-line their insults 
in the daily papers, who bake them in small ovens 
for the news column, who dress them out in carica- 
ture array for the humorous periodicals, every one 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 27 



gave the obligatory kick to the Jesuits, just as every 
one is vaccinated, just as every one takes his chance 
in the conscription. I had seen this often; not to 
spit on the Jesuit was indecent. 

When a miserable pleasantry has reached that 
monumental state of " respectability," it is better 
than a dozen and a half of maxims, because of the 
countless army of fools who are gulled by it, and 
because of the regiment of less honest men, the 
jokers who have concocted it and have set it afloat, 
and who consequently watch its course with an inter- 
ested devotion. 

I was afraid of the journals I contributed to, I 
was afraid of my readers, whom I liked, and who 
liked me. It made my flesh creep to think of the 
amount of popular prejudice. 

But how often between that hour of my flight 
and the moment when I surrendered to truth and 
the duties it imposes, how often has the proposition 
of our facile manager taken hold of my thoughts ? 
I continued to think of the Jesuits in spite of my- 
self: I read with a strange eagerness whatever bore 
upon the Jesuits. When they were well attacked, 
I was pleased to a certain degree : for it seemed 
to countenance my prudence, but then in the store- 
house of my recollections I always found, in spite 



28 JESUITS! 



of myself, some "document" to thwart the most 
plausible attack : and it must be confessed, that 
what fell into my hands was mostly poor rubbish. 
The trade of slapping at the Jesuits is so profitable 
that the publishers accept a pamphlet from any pair 
of paws: they no longer condescend to examine, and 
when one of the filthiest of the literary scavengers 
is at a loss how to buy a dinner, he has only to 
write Jesuits at the head of his "copy," to entice 
some unprincipled bookseller first, and then one or 
two thousand readers, who make a specialty of con- 
ning the bookstands every morning for fresh infor- 
mation on the new crime of the Jesuit. It is so 
profitable a sort of work that princes of the pen are 
not ashamed to be found in this rich gulch, plunging 
their arms with their sleeves rolled up into the 
brook whose bed is covered with precious metal so 
easy to reach. 

Nevertheless God sought me out. My wandering 
path happened once upon a time to cross the straight 
and beautiful way on which was walking Father 
Olivaint, crowned a martyr shortly after by some 
misguided ones belonging to that people of Paris 
whom he loved so ardently and had worked for all 
his life. My two eldest sons had been confided to 
the Jesuits, and the other two followed as soon as 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 29 



they were old enough. Did I understand then the 
greatness of the Institution? I think not, for in 
fact I still knew the Jesuits only through the hymn 
which their calumniators in empty rage chanted in 
their praise. I needed something better than that, 
I was dozing in my wordly prosperity, I needed 
misfortune to awaken me, and a sorrow that should 
scald my eyes with tears. The misfortune came : an 
unaccustomed sorrow fell upon me without warning, 
threw me to the earth, and in that solemn moment 
when the soul hesitates and shivers, called on one 
side by repentance and life, on the other by revolt 
and death, I was assisted by a Jesuit who touched 
the crucifix to my pains and lifted me out of despair. 

And one day, the happiest of my days, I knelt in 
a chapel of the Jesuits before a tomb where repose 
the mortal remains of that man so mild, so humble, 
that proud spirit, that apostle, that Jesuit Pierre 
Olivaint who was between the altar and me and was 
praying for me at the moment when I was receiving 
pardon from my God in the sacred host. 

I have said that before : here, there, everywhere ; 
do not blame me for saying it over again, it would 
be of no use. I will say it, and say it again in the 
thankful joy of my heart until the last hour of my 
life. 



30 JESUITS! 



My conversion constitutes my nobility, my glory, 
and my triumph in this world, and it will be my 
salvation in the one to come. And I gather with a 
pious care whatever relates to my conversion. I 
have already made one book about it, and I shall 
make others, repeating : Quia fecit mihi magna qui 
potens est. Is it not my right and my duty to chant 
the Magnificat of my conversion? 

God, sovereign saviour and helper, thou dost not 
lead all hearts by the same means ; thou dost offer 
to every spirit, long before the time of need, a way 
of crossing the abyss, suitable to his nature. I was 
frivolous and keen : thou didst throw in my road 
this little adventure both frivolous and keen, this 
affair of " documents" contrived to crush thy serv- 
ants, and which tossed about by the hand of a mer- 
cenary (I mean my own hand) looking for weapons 
and munitions for a bad cause, suddenly revealed the 
truth flashing amid the calumny so laboriously col- 
lected and concentrated. 

I think nothing could have struck me so forcibly 
as that coup de theatre. Fabricating catastrophes and 
surprises, I found myself face to face with a surprise 
and a catastrophe that had been arranged by God's 
own hand. I was not yet converted, because I did 
not desire conversion, but I was warned. The artil- 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 31 



lery borrowed by me from skepticism, Jansenism, 
Protestantism, and nihilism, from all who take the 
thirty pieces of silver that they cannot carry beyond 
the grave, had done like the Chinese cannon we read 
of, which spit fire at the breach. That much I had 
found out even before engaging in the fight, merely 
while learning how to use the weapons. And I so 
easily discovered the poor quality of these arms that 
I can never bring myself to believe in the good faith 
of those who use them. 

Certainly we have a right to allow for prejudice, 
stubbornness, blindness, hatred, all the passions that 
weaken our miserable nature, but there is evidence 
so loud that the ears must be stopped up that do not 
hear it, even if one has put out his own eyes so as 
not to see. We belong to such and such a party, or 
are under the influence of such a set of opinions, and 
it is no longer noblesse oblige, it is, alas, " business is 
business ! " 

Corner one of those people, for instance, who is 
prating about the nuns shutting up girls in their 
convents, and they will willingly confess that they 
are only indulging in harmless metaphor. 

The only thing inconvenient about all this, is that 
at the next martyr's day some of those sisters will 
have to suffer for these metaphors. So far I believe 



32 JESUITS! 



they have omitted to shoot any of the sisters : it is 
an oversight. If you only knew, gentlemen, you 
who denounce piety, what an enthusiastic hymn of 
mercy these brave women will sing in your behalf 
on the day when your pens that, in the Chinese 
fashion discharge in the rear and on the side, shall 
have violently opened, though in spite of you, the 
gate of the heavenly paradise for them. 

As we are in the mood for a few minutes chat, 
my dear friends, of former days that I still love, 
and that I pray for tenderly morning and evening 
without asking the least thanks from you for it, I 
remember how indignant, how grieved, above all, 
how frightened you were six years ago, just after the 
terrible events that stupefied Paris, France, and the 
whole world. I think I can say that the assassina- 
tion of the hostages (even including the Jesuits) 
caused you a feeling that was almost akin to horror, 
and you indignantly protested when the logic of 
some of us pointed out the connection between those 
disasters and the charming wit of your articles. 

You were displeased. You would not acknow- 
ledge that the chassepot of a drunkard reeking in 
blood was aimed with greater precision because 
your essays had indicated the game to be brought 
down. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 33 



And yet for three months your articles took a 
certain tone — indeed, they took a tone that was 
almost edifying. 

Of course I can understand how it was. When 
a child, I happened to set fire to our house, as I was 
playing with some matches, and, for three months 
after, matches caused me a good deal of repugnance. 

At the end of three months, like you, I opened 
the match-box again. Well, you may believe me if 
you choose, the same cause produced the same effect, 
and something was burned at our place. Fortu- 
nately our house was insured. My friends, is France 
insured ? If I were in your place, I should be cer- 
tain of this before playing with fire. 



34 JESUITS! 



IV. 

Thirty years have passed since that excellent, 
skilful director of the great daily proposed to me to 
put the Jesuits in the pillory, or set them up on a 
pedestal to be hooted at, according to my preference. 
I have spent thirty years, not in making this book, 
which I entitle Jesuits ! with an exclamation point, 
but in summoning up courage enough to write the 
first line of it. 

Would to God that I had spent this better half of 
my life in letting light on the subject to the extent 
of my poor ability ! But I have sown my long road 
with light pages that have been the sport of the 
wind. In them the name of God is dubiously hon- 
ored, religion receives an empty respect, and there 
is scarcely one of those pages that I can read with 
unmixed pleasure. I have lost too much time. 
Thirty years ! Jesuits ! How often, and for how 
long a time I have lightly used that word, before 
considering it as the greatest title of honor that can 
be given a servant of Jesus. 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 35 



I use it here in its opprobrious sense, humbly and 
proudly accepted, containing the outraged name of 
God and much more insulting to God than to the 
men of God. I call my book Jesuits! just as I 
should call it Thieves! or Felons! just as Voltaire 
called Jesus or His Church infdme! It is still the 
thrice holy name of the Saviour of men, spit upon 
in the presence of men, and with the approbation 
of men, by the descendants of those who founded 
Christianity in spite of themselves, when they nailed 
Christ to the cross. 

Whatever is done against God is for the glory of 
God. 

I care not if I am charged with confounding 
matters that are independent of one another, or with 
making the Church, by confusing two inseparable 
causes, bear the weight of that miraculous " unpop- 
ularity" of the Company of Jesus. 

Is not this unpopularity, indeed, the greatest pop- 
ularity that the centuries have had to love or to hate 
next to the very glory of God, and the holiness of 
the Church? 

And may we not even say that, to a slight extent, 
it is a part of the very popularity of God and of the 
Church? 



36 JESUITS! 



I am ready in advance to withdraw from this 
book every word that shall not have the entire 
approval of the common Father of the faithful, but 
I know in advance, too, that God and His Church 
are masters, who do not disown their servants. The 
Jesuits are neither God nor the Church ; they issue 
from the heart of the Church to carry the standard 
of the Heart of God at the front, and on the flanks 
of the Church. 

As heavy as may be their cross, made of glorious 
insults, and borne in the presence of the world's 
contempt, yet what is that cross and the insults that 
weigh it down, compared to the Cross of the great 
Infdme drinking shame and sorrow such as must be 
the shame and the sorrow of a God ! 

The Company of Jesus attracts most of the enmity 
for the Church because it bivouacs nearest to the 
enemy and has from its beginning formed the out- 
posts of God's army. It has a large share of the 
heritage left to the family of Apostles, by Christ's 
own words, a precious threat, and a terrible promise,* 
because it was expressly instituted to oppose its 

* " Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and perse- 
cute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, 
for my sake ; rejoice and be exceeding glad, because your re- 
ward is very great in heaven : " St. Matthew, v, 11 and 12. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 37 



naked breast to the revolt brought forth by the 
double apostasy of Luther and of Calvin, one a 
brutal rebel, the other a despot and a persecuting 
fanatic of the stake and faggot : both prophets and 
workers of convulsions that are unsettling the earth 
in our own unfortunate day, just as if the cruel bar- 
barism of science and intelligence, the intoxication 
of effete civilization, was determined t<s work more 
ruin than that robust barbarism of our first ages, 
which, in spite of its horrors, was at least the fruitful 
progenitor of modern nacions. 

On the contrary, nothing can be expected from 
the negations that surround us. The deluge of 
strong, ferocious men that engulphed the Lower 
Empire brought chaos, it is true, but it was a con- 
fusion teeming with sap and riches that Christianity 
utilized by its teachings ; to-day the flood brings 
nothing but Prussian brass and American gold, 
selfishness, book-keeping, a chilling fever, and the 
puffed-up emptiness of hate. 

It is undoubtedly a sorrowful thing to see ancient 
nations, dazed by mathematics and deceived by pro- 
tocols, so industriously preparing the great jubilee 
of universal war: a mingling of millions of men 
who will massacre one another by unthought-of 
mechanical inventions. 
4* 



38 JESUITS! 



This is what comes of wisdom without God. 
Materialist politics, whose maxim is the one used 
by despairing power, "After me the end of the 
world/' has no expedient left but to drench the 
frontiers in blood in order to keep its place in the 
interior. 

Europe waits, Europe trembles ; ah ! but Europe 
is occupied, ^br in spite of her fears, she speculates, 
she trades, she treats, she votes, and sometimes she 
reasons, all because she must live ; when she suffers 
from weariness she may amuse herself by the sight 
of the big cannons. 

What magnificent cannon ! It has taken ten cen- 
turies to bring them to their present high condition 
and nothing better will ever be made, — till next year. 

Is that all ? No, I have just said : the cannon will 
enact the part of the famous organ of Barbarism in 
Causes Celebres, which sang "Malbrouck" outside, 
while Fualdes was being assassinated within. 

Then what are these sounds that are to be drowned 
by the monstrous organ of war in Europe and in 
Asia ? What is going on inside those great houses 
called kingdoms, republics, or empires? Whom are 
they deceiving ? 

That is the secret of the eternal comedy which 
every one knows and every one ignores. Kings are 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 39 



very skilful and tribunes are very eager; truly the 
most murderous arm in all this is not cannon. 



But why, then, cry out " Jesuits ! " and what 
place amid the rattle of war or of revolution is 
there for a book which speaks of neither the arms 
of the tribunes, nor the arms of the soldiers ? 

Look closely, listen attentively ; beneath and above 
these hoarse sounds other voices wail and cry out. 
God punishes but he will not slay before the last 
fixed hour, and there is one empire that shall iTever 
perish, that of Faith : the Church. 

To the end of time the Church shall fight its 
rugged and glorious battle and will never be utterly 
victorious, but she will never be vanquished : Non 
prcevalebunt Just as she appears cast down for all 
time she will arise more valiant than ever and more 
than ever full of life. 

In an opposite direction to the impiety and mad- 
ness of our century, another movement is taking 
place. It does not become me to speak lightly of 
the importance of this movement, which, only begun, 
has already done so much ; its capabilities may be 
judged by the anger and the fury it evokes. The 
Company of Jesus, ever exposed to the first fire, 



40 JESUITS! 



has had to feel the first attack excited by this move- 
ment; again they are assailed with charges a hundred 
times refuted, and yet always repeated since the day 
when the parliament of Paris, that was so kind to 
Henry Ill's assassin, erected opposite the Palais de 
Justice, the famous pyramid declaring the Jesuits 
convicted of the crime of assassination on the person 
of Henry IV. 

Henry IV was well, thank God, and in no humor 
to put up with this pastime of the austere hypocrites 
who covered up their real felony by a false parade of 
devotion. He knew his parliament, and he knew 
the Jesuits. 

Henry IV became the barrister for the innocent 
Jesuits and the judge of their criminal judges who 
listened with bowed heads and pallid faces to his 
eloquent summing-up and his rigorous sentence. 

Never was Henry IV more of a king than on 
that day; never did he better display the sturdy 
reason of his language at once keen, manly, clean, 
and thoroughly French. Why is there not a picture 
in the Louvre to immortalize that striking scene 
which more than others showed the first steps of the 
Bearnese after recovering his authority. The chil- 
dren of Henry IV reigned for nearly two centuries 
after his death. The Bourbons had plenty of time 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 41 



to set their painters in ordinary at work to depict 
that sovereign act of justice, so proudly, so elo- 
quently wrought out that it has for three hundred 
years won the admiration of all historians, the ene- 
mies of God and of kings. 

But no, the canvass of our museums are covered 
with other subjects, and in the Louvre the dazzling 
debauch of color led by the brush of Rubens is 
wholly occupied with the gods of fable. These are 
represented leading to some pagan altar that young 
Florentine, who brought us a dark future in the 
folds of her bridal robes. 

Pictures, like* poems, celebrate only success, and 
are the slaves of success ; they are only dedicated to 
what flatters the prejudices of the herd. A triumph 
of Jesuits ! Where is the unlucky poet or painter 
to dare the extravagant task ? As for Jesuits, it is 
proper to strike, ridicule, calumniate them : that is 
the rule of success, and the well-trod path to glory. 

Some one has said the greatness of deeds and of 
men is exactly measured by the hatred aroused by 
these men and these works, and this is undeniably 
true. Nations seem to have lived out their history 
in the series of ages only to put the truth of this 
maxim beyond a doubt. In all pagan antiquity there 
were but three unanimously acknowledged as "just 



42 JESUITS! 



men, 



_._/' and almost in the Christian sense. They 
wore a crown of hatred, and were very properly 
chastized for their insufferable virtue. 

The first, Aristides, was driven from his country 
like a malefactor, as an example ; as examples, and 
like malefactors the other two, Socrates and Phocion, 
were put to death by hemlock. 

For twenty centuries or more these anecdotes have 
been told, and a certain melancholy morality is de- 
rived from them. I have read in a book intended 
for youth this bitter reflection on Aristides: "It 
is lawful to be lame among people who are well 
formed; that is liberty; but in a nation of cripples 
no one should appear without a crutch, which also 
is liberty." 

The contrary would be impertinence and even 
oppression: it is the cripple's right to see none 
but cripples. 

Aristides deserved death : he was a Jesuit before 
the time of Jesus. He is not entitled to pity. It 
is the Athenians in this case who deserve compassion. 
Aristides went into exile, and his exile magnified 
him. Socrates and Phocion drank their punish- 
ment, and their punishment glorified them. But the 
Athenians slipped down that decline up which noth- 
ing could raise them, for civilizations once dead do 
not rise again. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 43 



Nations die utterly when they die at all. 

Oh ! certainly, Aristides had need of no advocate, 
Plato defended Socrates only after his death, and 
Demosthenes would only have weakened while at- 
tempting to defend the cause of Phocion. If any 
eloquent or generous person had raised his voice 
during that trial, celebrated in the glory and misfor- 
tune of Athens, it would not have been for Socrates, 
or Phocion, or Aristides, but for the Athenians rush- 
ing on to. their ruin. 

Thus, too, with the cause of the Just of the just, 
Christ, condemned one day by the wicked Jews and 
ever since crucified over and over again by all the 
wicked of all nations. Neither Christ nor the Church 
of Christ needs an advocate. 

They who plead in defence of God and of the 
Church are in reality defending the true interests of 
the persecutors of God and of the Church. They 
raise their voice in the universal agora and cry out : 
"Athenians ! have pity on Athens." 

Thus, also, in the case of that sacred batallion of 
the Catholic army : the Company of Jesus. No one 
has a right to defend it for itself, because the hero 
who founded it was careful to stipulate in the con- 
tract made by his sublime ambition with the omnipo- 
tence of God, that persecution ought and would be 



44 JESUITS! 



the agreed price, the necessary equivalent, the endur- 
ing emolument of its untiring effort: so that any 
truce would be an insult, any relaxation a breach of 
agreement. 

Ah ! this is unlike the stipulations that enter into 
contracts between individuals or nations ! Let us 
not attempt to explain the folly of the cross, but let 
us see what it compasses in regard to human welfare. 

In the supernatural order of ideas is not the inte- 
rest, the welfare, the salvation of men hidden behind 
every epithet apparently intended to express an attri- 
bute of God? 

There is only God for the spiritual man, for the 
saint, for the martyr, and that is why the saint is 
holy, but with God there is nothing but mankind ; 
the martyr in dying for God serves mankind only 
by the wonderful reflection of merit. It is God who 
first had the folly of the cross. 

What Scripture designates by the strange, proud 
phrase, " the glory of God," is only the redemption 
of man. 

The eternal God who by the most impossible of 
miracles suffered death, died only for man. When 
people kneel and kiss the ground — I am speaking of 
those who have the precious treasure of faith — what 
do they do if not to beseech God to give them more 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 45 



faith and to bestow that supreme gift on those unfor- 
tunately deprived of it? Our Father who art in 
heaven, what do we ask you if not that " thy king- 
dom come?" And what is thy kingdom if it be not 
the accomplishment of Jesus' dying wish : heaven's 
pardon of earth ? 

In the beginning there was a great chastisement 
for the crime of the first disobedience. A veil cov- 
ered the sight of the man and woman exiled from 
Paradise. This veil which shut out the view of 
heaven did not prevent them from seeing earth, but 
they no longer had that sense that makes the easy 
comparison between the few hours of time and the 
billions of years which are but a speck in eternity. 

In the blindness of their fall they chose the little 
To-day rather than the immeasurable Ever. And 
the absurdity of this choice was felt for ages by 
mankind and by the religions of mankind. 

Jesus came, man raised his eyes above the earthly 
horizon and was taught that he has a providential 
mission to reconquer lost immortality in a contest 
that will not end here below. "O God!" says the 
prayer that accompanies the mingling of the water 
and the wine in the Holy Sacrifice, " O God who 
hast wondrously established the dignity of the 
human creature and who hast raised him up more 
5 



46 JESUITS! 



wondrously, grant that through the mystery of this 
water and this wine we may have a part in the 
divinity of Him who was willing to partake of our 
humanity. . . ." 

He was willing, but fifteen hundred years after 
the nativity of the Word made flesh, there were 
born men who refused to be any longer partakers 
of His divinity. A riotous and troublesome beast 
breaks away from the cloister and entices ignorance 
and misery to make the ancient bargain of its divine 
birthright for a mess of pottage. And it seemed for 
a moment as if the whole universe was about to 
grovel upon the coarse fare reeking in the trough of 
apostacy. 

Then was born another man, who did not begin 
as a monk, but as a soldier, and having been 
wounded in a heroic struggle was visited by God, 
while extended on his bed of suffering. He was the 
son of that military obedience and discipline that 
gain battles. He saw the evil and devoted himself 
to good, in the firm conviction that he would be met 
by the allied enmity of all for whom he offered his 
life; for this is peculiar to all the imitators of Jesus 
Christ; like Jesus Christ they ascend Calvary, 
willingly and knowingly. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 47 



This soldier was the first Jesuit, and the father 
of the Jesuits. He found the device of the Jesuits, 
in his deep, burning love of humanity. 

" For the greater glory of God," cried he, when 
first setting out on his crusade against Protestantism 
which nursed the weak pride of man and opposed 
the all-powerful humility of God. 

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam ! It was a loud cry and 
was heard alike by hatred and by love. It soared 
as high as the purified soul could rise. It rose like 
burning incense towards the heavenly throne, but it 
swept about, too, on the level of the earth, because 
the few words of this device translated into the 
universal language of Christ mean : " For the greater 
happiness of man ! " 

It was the truth, the whole truth, as regards what 
may be done here below for the human race, since 
the greater glory of God is but the richer and more 
complete redemption of man. 

When, then, will it be understood that to serve 
God, our friend above, amator noster, is to con- 
tribute, every one according to his strength, to the 
masterwork of God, which is the redemption of 
men ! We cannot serve God, because nothing can 
be added to all things which God possesses. 



48 JESUITS! 



We do not defend the imperishable Church; we 
do not plead the cause of the Jesuits, who have a 
right to persecution made necessary by the very 
agreement at their institution. 

What we serve, what we defend, and what we 
plead for, is the greater good of men in God. 



A PREL1MINAUY GHAT. 49 



V. 



It may be that my language seems lofty, but it is 
because I am setting down, as well as I can, noble 
thoughts that are far from being of my own concep- 
tion. But I shall descend to earth again, and in a 
few words unfold the plan of this book, which shall 
be as a preface to a more considerable work for 
which I have gathered the materials. 

In the account-currant that balances the humble 
elements of my life by debit and credit, I am in 
debt for -this work to a creditor, who is "my con- 
version." I have said, and I repeat it, the reckless- 
ness of calumny against the Jesuits has done a good 
deal for me, for it has enlightened me, at least, in 
moments of doubt, as to the good faith of the ene- 
mies of God. 

I know very well that most readers are not eager 
for enlightenment, and that there are some who are 
unwilling to be enlightened at all, but what Beau- 
marchais (who was well informed in these matters) 
said about calumny, can equally apply to truth ; 
5* 



50 JESUITS! 



there always remains a little something of the truth 
once spoken, and I shall be generously rewarded for 
my effort if, out of a thousand readers, there should 
be one who, walking in uncertainty, as I have done, 
between evil that kills and life-giving consolation, 
shall be determined to the side of life by my book. 

I am in debt — I shall pay. But how? Am I 
going to try a vehement and serious refutation of 
falsehood? It has been done over and over again, 
and well done. And with what result? I don't 
know. I have been told that it has passed a few 
armVlengths above that frolicsome audience which 
plays the game of stopping its ears whenever its 
babyish prejudice is not pampered. 

This is not encouraging, and, besides, to speak 
with violence, there must be a feeling of astonish- 
ment, of excitement, of indignation ; now, I have 
no astonishment; the only thing that can astonish 
men who know the world is, not to hear the voice of 
calumny; I have some emotion, but it is tempered 
by habit, and does not go beyond the limits of my 
little patience; I can pardon a troublesome buzzing. 

As for indignation, alas ! where shall I vent it? 

Can I forget that once upon a time I was ready 
to make my voice heard in the concert that I now 
complain of, and to howl like the wolf I was trying 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 51 



to be, not at all gratis, but for a sum of money, 
which I gave back, it is true, but with much grief? 

Can 1 forget above all that in place of restoring 
the thirty pieces, I should have earned them with a 
loyal rascality had not my conscience been offended 
by the odor of others 7 calumny, which my skilful 
manager had piled up on my table as " documents" ? 

But wait! I am really ashamed to admit it, but 
it was not even the grossness of the calumny that 
annoyed me. I thought it "ridiculous" to do as 
those others had done, and go only as far as one 
might go with the credulity and consent of readers ; 
this flattered the contempt I had for my neighbor 
before learning to love and respect him ; ray only 
ambition was to go further than any one else in this 
impertinent way. The blows of a bludgeon did not 
suit me, for I was desirous of dealing still heavier 
ones ; but, as was always the case with me, and I 
confess it here by way of penance, I was taken up 
with the little side of the comedy. 

I, who without any effort, had swallowed untruths 
as large as a house, false testimony of immorality, of 
murder, of ferocity, of ignorance, and even of heresy, 
stood still, astounded like Robinson Crusoe when he 
found a foot-print in the sand of his lonely isle, as 
I came to the end of a sentence at the bottom of 
Pascal's 9th Provincial Letter. 



52 JESUITS/ 

I remember it distinctly. In that famous 9th 
letter, so full of perverted sense, of dislocated, inter- 
polated, and even falsified texts, Pascal takes up 
books of " easy devotions " in general, and those of 
Fathers Binet and Barry in particular. It is very 
witty, though a little drawn out, very perfidious and 
stuffed with generosity. One cannot help seeing its 
frankness! As for good faith, Pascal never makes 
light in this respect, and is even more strict than 
Voltaire ! 

But there was a postscript which said quietly: 
"Since writing my letter, I have read Fathers Barry 
and Binet. . . ." 

At first, it is true, I paid no attention to this post- 
script as was natural; for Robinson Crusoe must 
have reflected a little before the simple mark of a 
heel could make his flesh creep. 

I was going to pass beyond, when reflection under- 
lined the candor of the phrase: "Since writing 

MY LETTER, I HAVE READ FATHERS BARRY AND 

Binet " 

There is nothing in that, do you say ? Ah ! I 
agree with you. Nothing, less than nothing! At 
most only the distraction of an honorable heart led 
into a shameful path, and in an unguarded moment 
betraying its natural honesty. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 53 



And jet, in spite of myself, I again read the phrase 
which this time appeared to be printed in immense 
characters: "SINCE WRITING MY LETTER, 
I HAVE READ FATHERS BARRY AND 

BINET " And I finished Pascal's book, the 

whole collection of Jansenist juggleries, with bursts 
of laughter. 

Is it my fault if gaieties of this sort strike me 
more forcibly than heavier villainies ? No one can 
put aside his own nature. That adorable postscript 
set fire to all the other "documents" which had been 
scorching a long while on my table. 

Pascal ! the great Pascal, the Pascal of the Thoughts 
had skinned those unlucky Fathers Barry and Binet 
in the dark ; he said so himself in the postscript 
without the slightest remorse and even with a certain 
pride in the task he had accomplished ! 

Pascal who wrote those splendid pages on death ! 
He boasted in his postscript of having when a judge 
tied the rope about the victim's neck before hearing 
the accused's defence ! 

Listen ! I thought a great deal of Pascal before 
that, but his postscript entitled him to my lasting 
gratitude, and I regard him, seated on the dead 
body of the Jesuit puppet he massacred, as one of 
the most active instruments in giving me that light 



54 JESUITS! 



as to the Company of Jesus, which was, glory to 
God ! the prelude to my conversion. 

No one, in fact, will deny that Pascal is not only 
the greatest, the most Christian, the most eloquent, 
but also the keenest, the hardest, and the crudest of 
all the Jesuits' enemies, and without slighting the 
talent of their more modern executioners, who have 
carried the cruelty of the Provinciates to assassination 
itself, it can be affirmed that since Pascal nothing 
has been said against the Jesuits which Pascal had 
not said and better said. It was a providence for a 
mind like mine, which is rather dull and indolent 
and only open to trifles, to perceive Pascal careful 
to add a postscript to his 9th letter, that would have 
done so well without it, just on purpose to slap 
me on the shoulder and tell me with a bewitching 
good nature : " I, who am the most conscientious of 
this drum-head court summoned to exterminate the 
Jesuits, use my authorities in that way ; I begin by 
chopping my man into small pieces, and afterwards 
look over the papers in the case at my leisure ; this 
saves time ! " 

Never certainly was there a happier or more strik- 
ing proof of the uselessness of attempting to convince 
those who shut their eyes and stuff their ears. 



A PRELIMINARY CHAT. 55 



It has not been proved that Pascal, as said in 
a Jansenist legend, had divined Geometry himself 
before having opened Euclid, for there was a copy 
of Euclid in his father's library, but it is clearly 
proved that Pascal, according to his own boast, con- 
structed, arranged, and bent the sails on those very 
wind-mills, which he called Jesuits, so as to attack 
them with mighty strokes of his pen. He made 
them or received them ready-made from the hands 
of some Nicole, or of some Arnault ; he colored the 
caricature which this Arnault or this Nicole had 
roughly outlined, in his bitter and painful humor; 
he clothed it in his own style and all the warmth of 
the fever that killed him when he was so great, so 
young, so unfortunate, turned to the sorrowful result 
of being a tool — a golden tool ! — in the disloyal 
hand of heresy ! 

I pity Pascal above all men, because my admira- 
tion of him is full of tenderness, but I cannot admit 
the objection that, " It matters little whether one 
reads before or afterwards, provided one reads." 
Those who read afterwards have " taken a posi- 
tion." They are no longer looking for the truth, 
but for a makeshift that will give their position the 
appearance of truth. 



56 JESUITS! 



Those who " read afterwards " take their places 
amongst those very deaf people who do not wish to 
hear. And I have all the more suspicion of them 
that the very paradox of the cause they champion 
constitutes the popularity of their pleading. Whether 
it be a cause they have chosen purposely or one that 
they have taken up unintentionally, the great ease 
of their success attaches them to their work. They 
keep on; do not count on their hesitation; they find 
error too convenient and too profitable. 

And do not count, either, upon their being held 
back by the coarseness of certain means, for it is the 
grossness of these falsehoods that pleases the glut- 
tony of their customers, who devour large slices 
and swallow great bumpers; and nothing is poured 
out so easily or so easily gurgles down the throat 
as sophistry. It is a mathematical law that the 
boldness of calumny cannot exceed the prowess of 
credulity. 

Now, do you know what these students can give 
to amuse their doctors? They can give them the 
money they lack themselves, the success they will 
never gain, and they, obscure as they are, can give 
them glory ! There are many of those who can do 
nothing for themselves but can do everything for 
the tavern-keeper who makes them drunk, for the 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 57 



mountebank who makes light of them. You do not 
suppose that the professor, the tavern-keeper, or the 
mountebank is going to abandon his bread, his votes 
or his glory, to go chasing the truth which brings 
neither votes, glory, nor bread ? Expect nothing of 
the sort : it would be against nature. 

Hope only in God, but pray in peace. For nine- 
teen centuries there has been the same spectacle of 
error always triumphant and always dying, to reap- 
pear, it is true, but ever in a new form, while truth 
remains fixed, the same truth, for there is but one 
truth against millions of errors. 

That is enough. Let us pray in peace, even if 
the thousand er-rors should be reinforced by another 
thousand, for they pass away and our one Truth is 
eternal. 



58 



JESUITS! 



VI. 

For whom then am I going to write? 
I am going to write for those who have not yet 
taken a "position/' for young people, for men of 
the world, and also for triflers like myself, undecided, 
as I was for a long time, and indifferent, between 
error which they are not well acquainted with and 
truth which they do not care to know. 

I do not know if I shall be read, but I hope so. 
For some, my bad books of former days will serve 
as a passport to this book, and that at least will be 
good. With others, ill-will may awaken some curi- 
osity, for certain poor little pens already accuse me 
of having returned to God as a speculation . . . How 
truly those little pens speak, O Lord ! What a great 
fortune I have gained by humbling myself beneath 
thy feet! But I have no desire now to sing the 
canticle of thanksgiving that fills my heart. It 
would be too long and I have only a few lines to 
indicate the scope of my work. But I will add that 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 59 



the insinuation against my honor is a lie: it will 
bring me readers. 

Is it not strange and amusing to see an honorable 
man, in the decline of his life, displaying himself in 
all the trickery of hypocrites ? I look for this, and 
I hasten to strike while the iron is hot. 

This book, providing its execution is equal to the 
conception, will be a wide sketch, and will compass 
in a general way what will form my large picture, 
" The General History of the Jesuits," which I shall 
complete if God gives me strength and life. I must 
begin by fixing the principal lines and regulating 
the perspective. This, then, will be a simple sketch, 
drawn in outline, or, to speak plainly, a rapid sum- 
mary, since it will be all in one volume, but from 
this general view I intend to make certain capital 
facts project beyond their plane ; precisely those 
facts which have ever been the theme of calumnia- 
tors, and which are, as it were, the legend of calumny. 

The exclamation point following my title is a 
promise to lay some stress on the constant assaults 
with which the hatred of three hundred years crushes 
and sometimes slays the Company of Jesus, that 
always rises again ; it seems to me proper to choose 
the most striking of the crimes laid at the door of 
these eternal defendants, so as to exhibit them under 



60 JESUITS! 



a somewhat dramatic form before proceeding to 
appeal the whole case. 

I remember reading in Gioberti, that melancholy 
Christian and sorry politician, a page full of the 
Italian emphasis, but eloquent and original, where 
that mortal enemy of the Jesuits, in Plutarch's 
fashion, compares Ignatius Loyola and Julius Caesar. 
Gioberti gives the preference to the founder of the 
Company of Jesus, but only so as more distinctly to 
mark the pretended decline of the children of Igna- 
tius in analogy with the real decline of Caesar's suc- 
cessors. 

I shall say nothing of the parallel itself, for I 
have no fancy for anagrams, acrostics or parallels. 

Caesar was a mighty soldier : he passed the Rubi- 
con. I do not know whether he founded anything. 
Brutus slew him. It is wrong to assassinate Caesar 
or any other human creature. But I know that 
Ignatius founded something humble, though gigan- 
tic from its cradle, and which, instead of declining, 
has continued its growth. 

I know that this thing won over to God, for all 
time or transitorily, the Indies, China, America, 
millions of souls, hundreds of millions of souls, and 
I know that the Judaic effort of Protestants and 
their commercial propaganda have thrown many of 
them back into error, but not all. 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 61 



I know that this thing has been for three centu- 
ries and still is, in spite of unceasing attempts to 
break it down, the most powerful of all instruments 
of education. 

I know that from the day of its birth this thing 
was calumniated, as in the time of Pasquier, as in 
the time of Pascal, as in the time of Voltaire, as in 
the time of Grioberti, as in our own time, and by the 
same calumniators, because the everlasting Church 
of Jesus Christ always attracts the same implacable 
hatred and envenomed anger. 

The Church of Jesus Christ is an army " directed* 
by a supreme pontiff, conducted by its thousand 
bishops, flanked by its hundred religious orders, 
among which in the front rank figures" this thing 
we are talking of, the foundation of St. Ignatius, 
the Company which, " born in an age of conflicts, 
has been the best organized of all for battle." 

" It exists only for conflict, and this is its merit 
before God and its significance in history." 

What conflict? The conflict of authority with 
revolt, of liberty with oppression, of order with 
chaos, of good with evil: the true, the great, the 
only conflict. 

* Mgr. Freppel, Etudes religieuses historiques et litleraires. 

6* 



62 JESUITS! 



I know, too, that this conflict is neither less 
general nor less desperate to-day than it was in the 
XVIth century. Now as then, it is not only the 
Church, but the whole fabric of society that is 
threatened, and certainly, if a comparison must be 
made, our own age is much more diseased in a 
religious, social, and political view than was that 
even of Luther and Calvin. 

I know that our country to-day has two urgent, 
vital needs : the need of learning obedience which 
gains battles ; the need of learning the God it has 
forgotten, which is victory itself. 

I have under my eyes the golden book where 
Father Emile Chauveau enumerates the pupils of 
the schools of St. Genevi&ve slain on the battle-field 
during our late disasters. Considering the whole 
number of pupils, the number of the victims, of the 
chosen rather, is truly and gloriously out of all pro- 
portion. Every one has remarked it. 

It may be said " It is chance." No. There is 
no chance. " Then it is good luck." . . . Ah ! cer- 
tainly, yes ! and the grace of God, but be sure such 
luck is not for those who stick to their bed. It is 
only for those who seek it. 

I know, too, that if our country is dying, it will 
die from these two diseases : lack of religion, lack 



A PRELIMINARY GHAT. 63 



of discipline ; and from a third ill which adheres 
closely to the other two : lack of devotion. 

We are " practical " and devotion is not business ; 
we are skeptical and devotion lives on faith ; we are 
gay, always gay, even to the fanaticism of weariness, 
and devotion, I affirm, would amuse no one in those 
giddy crowds who are inhaling the poisonous atmos- 
phere of luxury and misery in our halls of pleasure. 

I know all this and this is why I desire to relate 
the history of those who live for religion in absolute 
discipline, in absolute devotion, — trying to earn the 
great happiness and the great honor of having my 
name bandied about in ridicule by the hatred of 
passers-by, as I proclaim the glory of this title, the 
horror of God's enemies because it contains the 
name of God: JESUITS! 



THE FIRST YOW. 



Very early in the morning of Assumption-day, 
in the year 1534, a cripple, who, in spite of his 
infirmity, had a quick, energetic step, descended the 
great Rue St. Jacques, in the University quarter. 
He was dressed as a poor scholar, though he seemed 
to have reached middle life; but instead of the 
ink-case which usually beat about the breeches of 
those of his state, he had only a rosary at his side. 
To a good new rope passed under his worn-out 
cloak, hung his canvass wallet ; an excellent weapon 
for the wayfarer at night in Paris, and better 
than sword or staff, for the tramps seldom attacked 
beggars. 

Just as our scholar was going along by the para- 
pet of the deserted bridge, three o'clock sounded 
from the belfry of the Saint-Chappelle. 

65 



JESUITS! 



He turned his eyes up the Seine, bordered with 
dark houses, and with the sign of the cross saluted 
the square pile of Notre Dame. There was no 
glimmer on the horizon to indicate the coming of 
dawn. 

It was the hour when all Paris is asleep, whether 
in the XVIth, or in the XlXth century. While 
crossing the cite and threading the alleys that sur- 
round the markets, he met not a living soul until 
he reached the Porte de Montmartre, near our Rue 
du Mail : the first houses of the Rue Neuve Ste. 
Eustache, were built a little afterwards along the 
road on the exterior of the wall, whose crooked line 
it still preserves. 

The barrier was shut. The night-watchman asked 
the cripple: "Where are you going?" And the 
cripple replied, " I am going to the chapel of Saint- 
Martyr, to celebrate the feast of Mary ever a 
Virgin." 

The chapel of Saint-Martyr, situated a good deal 
below the parochial church of Montmartre, and 
whose crypt still exists beneath the pavement of the 
Rue Marie-Antoinette, occupied the exact place of 
the altar of Mars, where St. Denis, the patron of 
Paris was dragged and martyred along with his 
companions, Rusticus and Eleutherius, on the 9th 



THE FIB ST VOW. 67 



October, 272, for having refused to sacrifice in the 
temple of Mercury, the god of thieves, of mer- 
chants, and of another class of men whose name is 
not written in any language. 

The watchman said : " You have plenty of time 
before the hour of the first mass ! Turn to your 
right, by the way of the Poissonniers, for the main 
road is blocked up by the people who are at work 
on the water of the Porch erous." 

The M6nilmontant or Porcherous brook which 
now runs under the ground, at that time crossed the 
high-road of Montmartre, near our Rue de Provence. 
It used to be partially dried up in summer, and its 
stagnant waters bred pestilence. The cripple fol- 
lowed the Poissoniers road, crossing the thickets, 
where a little city of philosophical taverns was to 
arise in the XVIIIth century under the name of 
New France, and reached the eastern side of Mont- 
martre, through the fields which then stretched out 
between the village of Chapelle-Saint-Denis and 
the hamlet of Clignancourt, at the point called 
Fontanelle, and also Goutte d'eau, corrupted into 
Goutte d'or. 

There was yet no sign of dawn, but the moon, 
slanting to the horizon, threw an uncertain light 
upon the fields where the spire of the abbey, erected 



68 JESUITS! 



by Suger, arose from the midst of the plain against 
the black hills of Montmartre, and facing the four 
round towers of the Noble-House of St. Ouen, whose 
bells were constantly ringing because its masters, 
the Knights of the Star, instituted in 1351 by King 
John, were obliged to assemble there once a year on 
this day of August from Prime until after Vespers 
of the next day. 

Our cripple also, though he now carried a wallet, 
had been a knight in his time, but for a long while 
he had been living in humility, far from the glories 
of the world, so that it was not for him that the 
bells of the Noble-House were pealing. He was 
destined to found an order of knighthood differ- 
ently illustrious from King John's. 

He reached the summit of Montmartre by the 
steep path of Fontanel le. 

The night was still dark. Arrived at the upper- 
most point, taken up by the cemetery, just where 
they are now digging the foundations for the basi- 
lica which the vow of France has promised to the 
Heart of Jesus, he stopped, out of breath, and look- 
ing about him, said : " I am first at the meeting- 
place," and he took some repose, not sitting or 
lying down, but extended upon his face to say his 
rosary. 



THE FIRST VOW. 69 



There was silence on that naked crest where the 
summer-night's breeze passed, calm and soft. Not 
a sound. The village of Montmartre, whose new 
houses were on both sides of the church, still slept. 
Nothing appeared on the rounded surface of the 
slope between our scholar and the cemetery, except 
some black immovable objects ; rocks, no doubt, 
such as those which strew druidical fields. 

The clock of the church struck four, and at once 
the peals of the abbey summoned to the office of 
Matins. 

Then one of the rocks stirred and lifted up — then 
another — then all. There were six, and the lame 
scholar standing up in his turn, said : " God be 
praised, I thought I was the first and I was the 
last." 



The rising sun threw its rays upon six young men 
gathered about our more aged scholar, who seemed 
a master in the midst of his disciples. We must 
no longer call him scholar, for all the rest, except 
one who was a priest, wore the dress of that little 
nation of students who followed the course of the 
University of Paris. 
7 



70 JESUITS! 



The priest alone had the complexion of a French- 
man : all the others, including the cripple, wore on 
their brown faces the mark of the Spanish race, 
which at that time shared with us the dominion 
of the world. 

Francis I was king, Charles V, emperor. Co- 
lumbus, not a great while before had discovered an 
unknown half of the earth. 

Alexander Farnese, under the name of Paul III, 
replaced Leo X, at Rome, on the throne of St. 
Peter. 

In this year 1534, Luther was fifty; Calvin, thirty- 
three. The cripple, through whose brown canvass 
wallet some crusts of the bread of charity protruded, 
had reached his forty-seventh year. 

But why mention the age of this poor man 
between the ages of Luther and Calvin ? Because 
this poor man alone was greater and more fertile 
in good than Luther and Calvin united were terrible 
and fertile in evil. 

His name was Ignatius de Loyola. 

It was plain that he was a soldier. The mark of 
his unconquerable valor could be seen through the 
humility of his conversion. 

But he was a thinker, and his aquiline face bore 
the broad clearness of predestined heads. 



THE FIRST VOW. 71 



. There was much of the eagle in his profile whose 
haughty lines barely showed the immense softness 
which, with the help of God, he had forced into 
his heart full of the fever of war, on the day when 
the light had come upon him like a thunderbolt. 
Although his face displayed a generous elevation, 
the beauty of his soul shone most in his eyes ; his 
glance quelled and attracted at the same time, 
because it had at once power and tenderness. 

Thirteen years had passed since that bloody night 
at the siege of Pampeluna when he was found con- 
quered in his victory, after a meiee of twelve hours, 
where he had fought and raged liked a lion. 

These Loyolas, lords of Ognez, were of Cantabrian 
race and as hardened to battle as the steel of their 
swords. Ignatius, a brilliant captain, formerly page 
to king Ferdinand, young, ambitious, proud, beloved, 
at first rebelled against the hand of God which held 
him to the bed when he could hear the din of war. 
It is said that he asked those who were watching 
his sick bed to bring him some knightly romances 
so as to soothe his pain, and that they brought him 
stories of the martyrs, and among the rest the acts 
of the first, the greatest of all martyrs : the Passion 
of our Lord. 



72 JESUITS! 



There is a tradition in Guipuzcoa that Ignatius 
was then in love with a beautiful young girl of great 
wealth, whose hand had been promised him. When 
he had finished the Passion according to the apostle 
St. John, he tore her beloved image from his heart, 
and pressing against his lips a medal of Mary, the 
Mother of God, he dedicated his soul to the service 
of faith and his body to the chastity of the crucified 
God, saying : " I shall be a knight of the real love 
and a soldier of the only glory." 



We are not to take the life of a saint a3 an exact 
model for a man of the world. Each state of life 
has its own holiness. The saints are God's workmen 
and they owe him their whole work-day. Those 
who remain in the world must fulfil their duty to 
God, but without neglecting what they owe the 
world. 

Ignatius, unwilling to make this division of his 
labor, quitted the world and gave himself up utterly 
to God's work long before binding himself by any 
public and solemn promise. First of all he put 
himself in a state of voluntary indigence by aban- 



THE FIRST VOW. 73 



cloning all his wealth to the poor, and he separated 
himself from the world by breaking the dearest of 
ties. This was his " vigil of arms," and we must 
not lose sight of the fact that he entered upon his 
apostolate as a knight. 

Having bid good-bye to the glory of battles, which 
was his profession and his delight, to the love of his 
betrothed, to the noble house of his parents, to his 
dear friends, to his beloved relatives, he set out with 
streaming eyes but a firm heart. On the way, he 
gave to the poor, not the half of his cloak, like St. 
Martin, the apostle of charity, but the whole of 
his cloak, all his goods and his horse. As for his 
sword, he reserved that to hang up on a pillar of the 
monastery of -Monserrat, near Manresa in Catalonia, 
whither he was on his way as a pilgrim. 

In that monastery he made his general confession 
which lasted three days; then, clothed in a canvass 
sack, he withdrew into the famous grotto, where he 
had his first ecstatic revelations, in the intervals of 
the rambles afar which he made on foot to beg bread 
for his poor. 

There he saw in their germ his Spiritual Exercises 
and the plan of his Constitutions , that is to say, the 
work of his grand life. 



74 JESUITS! 



He saw something else : the need of being a man 
of science in order to teach truth and contend with 
error. 

But the glorious captain of yesterday, before sit- 
ting down on the forms of a school among little 
children, wanted to gratify his strong desire of 
pressing his lips on the tomb of the Saviour. Alone 
and on foot he set out with the grace of God, and 
through charity got passage on a ship from Barcelona, 
reached Rome, whence, after kissing the feet of the 
Holy Father, Adrian VI, he again took up his wallet, 
crossed Italy, begging his bread on the way and 
reembarked at Venice on a galley which landed him 
on the island of Cyprus. 

From there he reached Jaifa, thence the Holy 
City, after a journey which had taken him nearly a 
year. 

Had it not been for a fortunate obstacle which 
Providence set in his path, his whole future mission 
would have been stopped there, for the land trodden 
by the footsteps of Jesus was so dear to him that he 
determined to live and die in it; but the delegate of 
the Holy See who exercised authority over pilgrims, 
commanded him to return to Europe, and Ignatius 
for the last time moistened the Redeemer's footprints 
with his tears, on Jebel-Tor, at the blessed hour of 
His Ascension. 



THE FIRST VOW. 75 



Seven months afterwards he was entered as a 
scholar in the lowest class of the University of Bar- 
celona. Persecuted for his wonderful piety, which 
seemed to be sorcery, several times imprisoned, 
driven from Barcelona to Salamanca, from Sala- 
manca to Alcala, meeting injustice with the silence 
of resignation, he left Spain and took up the road 
to Paris, whose University was the first in the world. 



At the time of his arrival in France in the early 
part of 1528, Ignatius, born in 1491, was thirty-six 
years old. He was courageous enough to begin his 
humanities over again at the college of Montaigu, 
then at Sainte-Barbe, and in spite of the obstacles 
which his pious life, the depth of his medita- 
tions, and the apostolate he was already trying, 
opposed to his elementary studies, he made some 
progress, but persecution had followed him across 
the Pyrenees. 

It happened that a professor of Sainte-Barbe, 
John Pegna, accused him, not of being a sorcerer, 
as had been done in Spain, but of drawing the 
scholars into mystic reveries which took them from 



76 JESUITS! 



their studies; wherefore, he condemned him to be 
publicly flogged in the hall. 

Ignatius submitted with a humility that aston- 
ished the principal of the college and led him to 
examine for himself. 

Ignatius underwent the examination just as he 
had accepted the punishment, and it was noised 
about that there would be an exemplary flagellation. 

The scholars disliked him on the account of his 
perfect life. It was like the announcement erf a 
feast-day. A great crowd was already gathered in 
the large hall where the execution was to take place 
and testified its impatience, like the audience in a 
theatre anxious for the curtain to rise, when the 
principal appeared. 

He held, or rather drew Ignatius by the hand. 

He passed through the cruel, curious ranks. The 
one who appeared to be a culprit followed, pale 
and with downcast looks. 

The principal stopped in the middle of the hall 
and, to every one's great astonishment, his eyes were 
full of tears. 

For a moment he stood still, undecided and as if 
overcome by his feelings, then suddenly pressing 
Ignatius to his bosom (others say he fell upon his 
knees), he cried out : " This man has not only let 



THE FIRST VOW. 77 



himself be wrongfully accused without complaining, 
but in return for the good he has done, was cheer- 
fully ready to suffer the injury of an unjust punish- 
ment. I have discovered the conscience of a saint 
and you see it before you ! " 

Up to that time, the least malicious of Ignatius' 
companions had ridiculed his zeal in leading souls 
to God : they had thought the part of a director of 
consciences unbecoming to this stranger living on 
the charity of passers-by, and whose face had become 
wan before he had taken any degree in science or 
letters, but everything was changed after the inci- 
dent we have just related: many hearts came to 
him. 

Ignatius repulsed no one, but he attached himself 
to few. Do not be astonished, for he was making 
a careful selection from all who came to him : he 
was choosing those who were to be Jesuits. 

The first of the chosen was a very young man, 
open and mild, named Peter LefSvre. He too, 
from the heart of Savoy, had come as a pilgrim, to 
take orders, and was already renowned for his great 
learning. Ignatius made himself at once his master 
and his disciple : his master in faith, his disciple in 
studies: and thanks to this devoted preceptor's help 
the difficulties he had found on the scholastic way 



78 JESUITS! 



were removed. He was graduated master of arts 
and at last could enter the class of theology. 

Lefevre had the tender friendship of a scholar of 
his own age, Francis Xavier, belonging to a noble, 
but very poor family of Navarre ; he had a warm 
heart, a sparkling eloquence, a lively wit, but was 
utterly given to earthly ambition. Ignatius under- 
took to convert him, and the discourse that his- 
torians put in his mouth seems to come down from 
evangelical heights : " Xavier, of what use will it 
be to gain the universe and lose your soul? If 
there were no other life than the present one, no 
other glory than the glory of the world, you would 
be right to think only of raising yourself among 
men : but if there is an eternity, why confine your 
desires here, and why prefer what passes away to 
what will never end ? " Ignatius found it hard to 
conquer that soul, but it was his finest conquest. 

At this time neither Lefevre nor Xavier knew 
that they were enrolled as captains in an army 
without soldiers. So far Ignatius' thoughts be- 
longed only to God. 

The third and fourth came together from Spain 
with the intention of giving themselves to Ignatius, 
who was becoming famous without seeking fame. 
James Laynez and Anthony Salmeron, the latter 



TEE FIRST VOW. 79 



scarcely more than a child, were met with open 
arms : the master's first glance discovered the mark 
of genius in their young faces. 

Then came Alfonso from the village of Bobadilla, 
and the Portuguese, Rodriguez Azevedo. 

With the exception of Xavier, who taught phi- 
losophy, all six were so poor that they lived on 
alms. But Ignatius, already the father of this 
family, stretched out his hand for his children. He 
had not let them guess his projects, and yet they 
looked to him for something great. 

Lefevre was ordained a priest. 

A little later Ignatius kept himself apart in soli- 
tude in order the better to give himself to his medi- 
tations. Without the use of words a current of 
thoughts passed between him and his friends who 
put no question. One day, however, Xavier asked 
him : " Have you nothing to say to us ? " Ignatius, 
whose eyes were full of tears, embraced him and 
answered nothing. 

The 13th of August, 1534, the day before the 
Eve of the Assumption, he ordered all to fast and 
confess next day : then having told Lefevre to be 
at the abbey in advance in order to prepare for the 
Mass he was to celebrate on the morning of the 15th 
of August, in the crypt of Saint-Martyr, he added ? 



80 JESUITS! 



" Let all of you be on the summit of Montraartre 
before daybreak, in the field behind the church, 
below the cemetery. I shall be there and I shall 

SPEAK TO YOU." 



Those who on that morning gathered about Igna- 
tius de Loyola at the meeting-place, were Peter 
Lefevre, a priest, Francis Xavier, James Laynez, 
Anthony Salmeron, Nicholas Alonzo de Bobadilla, 
and Simon "Rodriguez d'Azevedo, scholars. All 
were to have great, though unequal parts in the 
glory of their master. 

The oldest, Lefevre, was twenty-four; the young- 
est, Salmeron, had barely reached his eighteenth 
year. 



Ignatius de Loyola kept his promise, no doubt : 
he spoke in the midst of that group of elected souls 
who listened to him attentively. The great recol- 
lection of the Apostle of the Gauls surrounded them 
on this mountain where the living God replaced the 
dead gods of paganism, buried beneath the earth. 



THE FIRST VOW. 81 



The glance of the rising sun silvered the royal vane 
of St. Denis in the distance, and in the foreground 
rested kindly on the humble church of Mont- 
martre which had been the temple of Mercury, 
but had been purified and baptized in the blood of 
martyrs. 

As far as the eye could reach, all was loneliness. 
The.awakening of Paris, shrouded in mist, gave out 
no other sounds than the voice of its bells, recalling 
the sweet glory of Mary, the mother of Jesus, alike 
to those who loved her and to those who hardened 
their hearts in forgetful ness. 

Paris was far from Montmartre in those days; 
it was already called a large city, yet it was in the 
middle of the plain, like a flock of houses nestling 
around the black towers of Notre Dame. 

It terminated on the east at the gardens of St. 
Paul, widely separated from the Bastille that seemed 
with its wheel-like towers a heavy chariot wending 
its way to the donjon of Vincennes ; on the west it 
stopped at the Louvre, on the south side at the en- 
closure of St. Germain-des-Pr6s, on the north side 
it ended within some hundred yards of St. Eustache, 
and nothing indicated that it would soon overflow 
its crenelated walls and inundate the surrounding 
country. 



82 JESUITS! 



All this was faintly seen through the fog, the fog 
of Paris, its breath, beneath which the gilded crosses 
sparkled feebly as they received a mysterious kiss of 
light through the veil. 

It was calm, but something of a hidden threat 
escaped from this repose. 

Ignatius spoke : what did he say ? 

Those who desire to hear can catch his words 
through the distance of time. They resound in his 
works, and his writings have immortalized them. 

When he had exchanged the Christian salute with 
his companions, he paused, and then made known 
his thoughts in the name of the Father, of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost. And through the church 
windows came the sweet chant of the recluses who 
were celebrating the praises of the Lord. . . . 



" You are impatient, my brothers and 

my children, because you have been waiting for me 
for some days, but for fourteen years I myself have 
waited in patience. For fourteen years I have raised 
my eyes to heaven and lowered them to the earth, 



THE FIRST VOW. 83 



seeking what heaven is preparing for the world, and 
what the world is meditating against heaven. 

" The present time will make a long page in his- 
tory. Peace to those whose names shall not resound 
in the midst of this noise. Ours shall all be en- 
scribed there; those of some with their blood. . . . 

"One after the other, Selim and Soliman have 
threatened Europe ; the crescent prevails in Rhodes, 
no longer under the standard of Jerusalem. We 
have seen Christians in the service of the Turk ; we 
have seen kings conspiring the fall of their own 
throne, and in the height of the astonishment caused 
by these facts which frighten reason, a loud voice in 
Rome is denouncing corruption in the cloister and 
falsehood that stands at the altar. What can astonish 
us after this ? Where will the chastisement end ? 
What is God's desire? Who understands the lan- 
guage of His anger? 

" There is the apostate Luther, a man of brutalized 
genius, of an enslaved mind, taken captive by the 
senses, with the appetite of an ogre, the strength of a 
bull, and the cruelty of a wolf: a deep shame, but a 
shining lesson, teaching the world that heresy is not 
the revolt of reason, but the uprising of the flesh. 

"Covetous Germany has bounded at his voice, 
raging in sacrilege, in theft and in murder. Princes 



84 JESUITS! 



head the riotous mobs who in the end will trample 
crowns beneath their feet. In sacking cathedrals 
they teach how to demolish palaces. .The instruction 
will not be thrown away. 

" Hell triumphs insolently, it is the orgy of the hu- 
man beast who accuses the Holy Virgin of immodesty, 
and the true God of falsehood; they suppress the Mass, 
that is to say, Jesus; these men who call themselves 
Christians and more than Christians, since they pre- 
tend to reform Christianity, throw down the insulted 
Christ and His dishonored Mother from the altar. 

" These are the ' Reformers ' in arms against 
each other, accusing one another of disloyalty, the 
only truth they speak ; there is Carlstadt who 
slaughters infants' souls by depriving them of bap- 
tism ; there is Munzer, the furious leveller, finding 
in a falsified gospel the law of theft, the confusion 
of mine and thine, the antique folly of the division 
of land ; there is John of Leyden, the dramatic 
prophet, preaching community of all things, even of 
women : a masterpiece of Satan, who in him paro- 
dies royalty, the priesthood and even martyrdom ! 
There is Zwingle, the austere maniac, whose inheri- 
tance Calvin will appropriate .... but why go over 
the names? It is hypocrisy, blasphemy, pillage, 
ravage, slaughter ; it is the substitution of time for 



THE FIRST VOW. 85 



eternity, the festival of great words that cover the 
shame of men and the disgrace of things; it is 
Reform, red with wine and with blood, leprosy 
dressed up as a panacea! 

" The Turks deceive no one, the Turks are barba- 
rians, themselves deceived by a false prophet ; they 
have denied nothing; but Luther, Carlstadt, Mun- 
zer, Zwingle, John of Leyden, knew Jesus, and 
have betrayed Jesus ; they have sold him for their 
interest, their passions, their inordinate thirst of 
power, of renown, of enjoyment; they have wil- 
lingly made themselves the apostles of pride, the 
servants of the enemy of mankind. 

" Thus the enemy 'rejoices ; he laughs and into 
the midst of the horror he introduces an ill-omened 
gayety that recalls the time when the Lower Empire 
scoffed at its own agony. Christiern makes a prelate 
of his barber ; Henry VIII, the beau and the heads- 
man, between the assassination of two of his queens, 
finds the time to reform also, and to write pamphlets 
where he calls Rome a prostitute, because Rome has 
refused to wash the nuptial bed that he had steeped 
in blood and shared with a harlot. 

" For they are all the same ; each of these reform- 
ers accuses the Church of the crime or crimes which 
he has notoriously committed; wickedness drags in- 



JESUITS! 



nocence before the tribunal with cries of indignation ; 
the assassin shouts ' murder !' the pilferer, ' stop 
thief!' Judas denounces treachery ; Henry VIII is 
scandalized ! He dips his pen of former ' defender 
of the faith'* into the mingled blood of women 
and priests and he finds in calumny a rest from the 
labors of the executioner. 

" Is that all ? Would to God it were ! We are 
in France, and Paris lies beneath us. Will the eld- 
est daughter of the Church assist her mother by the 
valor of her arms against the dangers that threaten 
her upon all sides? She can. I hope she will. 

" You and I are children of that magnificent Uni- 
versity of Paris, the honor of science, the pride of 
letters, and like me you have heard these sounds, so 
timid at first — something shrill but furtive, like the 
hissing of a snake in the grass — and which, year by 
year, increase in volume till they seem like the 
voices in the air that presage the coming of tem- 
pests. 

"The deep avowed shame of the sects beyond the 
Rhine has not yet reached here ; Paris cannot be a 
resort of lansquenets, and the absurd spectacle of 



* Henry VIII, before his apostasy, bore the title, defensor 
Jidei, given him by Kome, and still proudly borne by his suc- 
cessors. 



THE FIRST VOW. 87 



"Wartburg, the Protestant Sinai, where the tipsy- 
Luther conversed with the devil as Moses did with 
God, would only suit Germans ; nor does the cold 
epilepsy of the North, where the pagan soil so long 
refused to admit the roots of the Cross, prevail here ; 
and still less the immovable arithmetic of London 
merchants reckoning the profits of having a Pope of 
their own, one who would divide the patrimony of 
the Church with them and be at once king, professor, 
purveyor, sovereign pontiff, handling the sceptre, the 
censer, the axe, with one hand, equally skilful at the 
pupil's desk or at the headsman's block, English 
enough to establish an English faith, baptized under 
the name of Anglicanism, English morals, an English 
modesty, and an English truth, just as those other 
honest merchants of Carthage invented the Punic 
faith — no, these things are only good for the English. 

" France desires other sophistries, and above all 
care in the manner of their presentation. She must 
have an appearance of examination, the phantom of 
logic, and a toy of some sort to amuse her under the 
name of liberty. 

" She, perhaps, will go further in the way of polit- 
ical follies than all the others, because she is stronger 
and more lively, and fevers are in proportion to the 
generosity of temperaments, but so far she has not 



88 JESUITS/ 



set out, and her witty good sense is proof for the 
present against the disgusting bait that is hanging 
on the fish hooks of heresy. 

" But wit, the dear, dangerous wit of the French, 
has its weak side. There are women, vice, the 
attraction of the art of writing and saying things. 
The pen is woman, so is the word. ... It is women 
who open the gates of France to evil. 

"The king's sister, Marguerite, shelters and warms 
in her bosom the dangerous viper, the really strong 
workman, who will give heresy its philosophical 
mask and its disguise of moderation ; John Calvin 
who has already reformed Luther and will be re- 
formed by thousands of others, for the history of 
Protestantism will have only one line, or rather one 
name continually erased and rewritten ; reform, that 
is rebellion : reform of reform, rebellion against re- 
bellion, heresy against heresy, a mob of schisms 
increasing and multiplying in the midst of schism, 
just as weeds spring up in the bad farmer's land. . . . 

" I have promised to build a chapel (do not 

be astonished, for we shall build many, and even 
churches !) in the very place where the first Lutheran 
profanation was committed against the Virgin in 
Paris. It happened under my eyes in the Rue St. 
Antoine, and you will know the place when you see 



THE FIRST VOW. 89 



them digging the foundations. The sacrilegious mob 
was guided by a page of the Duchess of Etampes, 
the king's friend ; and she reforms too, not her 
impure life, but the ancient honor of her race, by 
selling her treacherous faith and her duped king to 
English intrigues. 

"In France error grows by the favor of these two 
women, sitting on the very steps of the throne and 
endowed with God's gifts. Impious books circulate 
in the schools and the first of Calvin's printed blas- 
phemies was sent, in a gilded binding, to the woman 
who could slip it into the king's private apartments. 
Through her pleading the king made the Lutheran, 
Nicholas Cop, rector of the University of Paris, and 
this man, who from having been Calvin's master, 
has become his servant, thanked the king by pub- 
licly preaching not only against the Vatican, but 
even against the Louvre 

"Is that all? No, indeed. This very year 
Calvin, who has not Luther's bravery, and whose 
burdened conscience constantly threatens him with 
the phantom of personal danger, fled from Paris. 
Whither? To the court of Nerac, to Margaret of 
Yalois, queen of Navarre ! 

"And from there they are trying to carry error 
into Catholic Spain ! while on the other side, the 



90 JESUITS! 

poison setting out from Switzerland and crossing 
Savoy penetrates Piedmont, which has ever been 
hostile to the Holy See. It is spread about by 
Renee, the duchess of Ferrara, a daughter of Louis 
XII, almost as much out of her head over Calvin 
as Margaret of Valois herself, and she is giving 
her hand to John Valdez, the favorite of the 
viceroy of Naples, whose emissaries are stealing 
into Rome! . . . 



" In the eternal city the Vicar of Jesus Christ sits 
abandoned on his throne, his hands extended to 
heaven ; he sees the deluge rising, rising, sweeping 
away everything in its fearful course, threatening to 
invade the heart of Catholicity, the last rampart of 
faith, of authority, of truth 

". . . . This is not news to you, my children and 
my friends ; the evil is so glittering that all can see 
it with closed eyes, for the rays of its infernal light 
pierce the eyelids. What I have desired to show 
you is the number and the strength of the battalions 
that are leagued against faith. A like gathering of 



TEE FIRST VOW. 91 



men has never been before. Will faith be over- 
come? 

" It cannot be. 

"Who will defend it? Jesus. Where is the army 
of Jesus ? At Rome and in France. 

" Is the army of Rome numerous ? No. 

" Is it strong ? Yes. 

" And the army of France ? 

" It is here, count it ! 

"Six young men and a cripple, who will be an 
old man to-morrow ; seven souls in all. 

"The army of France has but one Frenchman. 
Do not despise it, for with the help of God it will 
do great things. 

" While you were waiting for me, rebuking my 
silence, in the humility of my prayer I was raised 
to those heights whence one can look out upon the 
future. I read our history in Jesus' secret. God 
accepts us for his soldiers. He showed me the wide 
field of battle where the other standard marches 
against his standard. I saw that. 

" I saw the whole world come down into the 
arena; I saw you, I saw myself. . . . 

" I do not ask if your will is for war. What 
good ? I know that your will is abandoned to the 
will of God. . . . 



JESUITS! 



"And I know you are the ' Companions of Jesus ;' 
you shall have that name, understand me : you will 
not take it, God gives it to you. . . . 



". . . . You shall have hours of triumph so 
splendid that jealous hatred will rise up about you 
in a whirlwind, just as water boils and hisses about 
the red iron it is tempering. 

"And you shall have disasters so fearful that your 
enemies will set their heel upon what they take to 
be your dead body. 

" But you shall not strike, and yet they shall be 
cast down. . . . You shall never strike. 

" Your law is not to strike, and you shall conquer 
by this law. 

". . . . How is the enemy called? — His name is 
Revolt. 

" Where is Revolt ? In Heresy which is False- 
hood. 

" How are Revolt and Heresy to be attacked ? 
By Authority which is Truth. 

" Where are Authority and Truth ? In the Church 
with Liberty, which is the right to live and die ac- 



THE FIRST VOW. 93 



cording to the law of God, in order to be born again 
in the glory of God. 

" Is the Church attacked ? Yes, on all sides. 

" Does the Church need any defense ? For herself, 
no, for she is sure of life from the promise of Jesus 
Christ. In the interest of what is not the Church, 
yes, and above all in the interest of the active enemies 
of the Church, who will either come back to the 
Church or will die, for out of the Church there is 
no salvation. 

" We do not wish them to die. 

" Then how defend the Church, that is to say, the 
possibility of salvation for those who do not know 
the Church and for those who persecute the Church ? 
By opposing obedience to revolt, self-denial to sel- 
fishness, free sacrifice to the slavery of gross passions 
which always demand greater indulgence ; that is to 
say, by making Christians. 

"How are Christians made? By the word of 
Jesus Christ, recalled to men, and taught to children 
and to infidels. 



" The reign of brute force will never finish ; the 
sword will be broken only by the cannon, and that 
9 



94 JESUITS! 



will prevail till a more brutal force dismounts it; 
but opposed to these inert powers that blindly serve 
the justice of God and the wrongheadedness of man, 
another power is appearing, called thought. 

" It is only of yesterday, though the Scripture is 
1500 years old, but it is our age which is beginning 
to cast written and spoken thought upon the earth to 
feed the appetite of the mob. 

" Wickedness ever wakeful, while goodness slum- 
bers, has seized this thing, which is right enough 
in itself, and, by means of it, has resuscitated the 
Judaic idol and the altars of the heathen gods. 

" We must not permit the betrayal of defenceless 
ignorance by this perverted knowledge. 

" We shall not fight with the sword, but with the 
word ; we shall preach to men and instruct children ; 
we shall make Christians by preaching and teaching. 

" I who have had lessons from all of you, and am 
the least learned among you, have at least the science 
of the humble, and you have chosen me to direct 
your hearts, if not your intelligence. Why? Be- 
cause you have seen the name of Jesus flaming like 
a torch in my conscience. 

" I have studied at Barcelona, at Salamanca, at 
Alcala, at Paris ; what have I learned ? The lan- 
guage of doubt, but in me there was no harbor for 



THE FIRST VOW. 95 



doubt. Jesus came and my trust in God has grown 
by the doubts of man. 

"I have admired orators and men of learning, 
and have drunk the philosophy or the poetry that 
poured from their lips, yet at the bottom of my soul 
I have said the prayer of our Father in heaven as 
it was taught to the apostles by the Man-God Him- 
self. That is infinite poetry and everlasting philoso- 
phy. 

"I have heard the Scotchman, Buchanan, who 
sings like Virgil; the profound Latomus; the vast 
Gombaut ; the universal William Bude" ; Danes, and 
his master Lascaris, who could have discoursed with 
Plato in the pure language of Homer ; Ramus, so 
keen to point out the shortcomings of Aristotle, and 
so unable to see his own weakness; always those 
noble minds spoke a lofty language, but above their 
full sounding tones I heard the voice of my God 
teaching me to believe, to hope, to love and to aban- 
don my soul to the wonders of his mercy. 

"And each day I loved, I hoped and I believed 
more and more, tasting the joys of faith in the very 
midst of the boldest denials, understanding the hap- 
piness of hoping all the more for the learned discour- 
agement that surrounded me, and making the canticle 
of my great love be heard above the wailings of their 
hatred. 



96 JESUITS! 



"For every blasphemy is a cry of pain coming 
from the torture of remorse. 

" From the thrice blessed time when God visited 
me as I lay wounded on my pallet, T have been 
seeking my way, the road that is to lead me to the 
end I so passionately desire ; the greater glory of 
God, that is to say, the most complete salvation of 
man. 

" On this road my soul has made three halts. 

" In my grotto at Manresa, I dedicated myself to 
alms and prayer, those powerful weapons of the first 
hermits. I was still ignorant of the disease of our 
time, yet something murmured in me : * It is not 
enough.' 

" The Mother of Jesus, whom I had constantly 
besought, inspired me to visit Calvary ; on my way 
I heard terrible threats in the name of Luther. 
The hope of battle arose in me. 

" That was the second station on my journey. 

" And the battle was the one I spoke of a little 
while ago ; a battle where we give no blows, and 
which is decided in the enemy's favor, the super- 
natural battle of charity. 

"And already I thought: l How few will believe 
in the sincerity of such an effort which upsets the 
equilibrium of human virtues ! Nothing for noth- 
ing, is the world's law/ 



THE FIRST VOW. 97 



"And I already heard the great cry that was to 
go up around me : ' Hypocrite ! hypocrite ! hypo- 
crite !' 

" That is the hardest insult to bear. My captain's 
pride still exists in the corner of my heart. l Hy- 
pocrite ! hypocrite V may I live to swallow this 
insult; may I die buried in this cry, my Lord and 
my God, and may my shame be thy glory ! 

" Nevertheless, to preach as well as to teach, one 
must be instructed. I studied, and while studying, 
I heard the same mysterious voice as at Manresa, 
murmuring the same words : * It is not enough.' 

" O Virgin ! said I, Immaculate Mother, what 
more must I do? Shall I never know the will of 
my divine Master ? 

" . , . . Here I am stopped by respect, happiness 
and sorrow. It has been thus whenever the revela- 
tion of the mysterious and wonderful facts of my 

time of trial has come to my lips O Jesus of 

piety and of pity, the treasure of the poor, the glory 
of the humble, from the very day when I first touched 
the hand of Peter Lef&vre, who was to be the first 
one consecrated among us, my strength grew, my 
hope enlarged, and the idea of our association hav- 
ing arisen in me, I no longer heard the voice saying : 
( It is not enough.' 
9* 



98 JESUITS! 



" It was enough ; with the idea of association a 
plan took shape in my thoughts. 

"lama soldier and could dream only of an army. 
Besides, did I not remember seeing in my first ecsta- 
cies those great multitudes who walked in the shadow 
against the light of the Cross, and the mystic conflict 
of the two standards in the boundless plain ? 

"My army existed, though I was still alone with 
Lefevre to whom I had said nothing. 

" You came, one after the other, my friends and 
my children, and I enlisted you without your know- 
ledge. Others offered themselves, but I stopped at 
the seventh. 

" The present hour requires no more. What the 
future asks God will tell. 



"We are seven against millions of men who are 
unfaithful to God. The millions of men who are 
faithful to God will, perhaps, not be with us. 

" We do not know our friends and they do not 
know us; but we know our enemies and we shall 
make them know us. 



TEE FIRST VOW. 99 



u We have neither authority nor mission, and we 
have but one right, that of giving ourselves and 
asking nothing in return. Our strength is in the 
absence of all strength. We desire not arms, sub- 
sidies, ramparts, nor anything perishable. 

" We shall have everything in Jesus Christ. 

" We shall go as our divine Master went through 
Judea, with open hands and bared breasts. We are 
to-day what I was when alone yesterday, the Com- 
pany founded to carry the Cross of Jesus. 

" Each of us shall fall by the wayside, crushed by 
the fearful and sweet weight of that burden, but 
what matter? The work shall live aud grow — I 
know it. 

" The Company of Jesus shall triumph in Jesus, 
through Jesus. 

" It will stop the desertion that is desolating the 
temple, it will fill up the great gaps in the ranks of 
the faithful. 

" Do not doubt it ; so it will be. 

"Antiquity had a sublime fable: Orpheus going 
even to death in search of his love. We shall do 
as Orpheus; the Company of Jesus will seek out 
the victims of apostasy in the apostates' hell; it will 
snatch those dear souls from death, by going to the 
lowest depths of the abyss ; it will try, may it sue- 



100 JESUITS! 



ceed ! to save the soul of the apostate itself from 
the greatest of misfortunes ! . . . . 

" Already some of the wanderers are hesitating 
and inquiring the right way; we shall point it out 
to them, that is not much. 

" But there are great numbers of little souls, the 
children, the well-beloved children of whom Jesus 
said : ' Suffer them to come unto me/ we shall take 
the children by the hand and lead them to Jesus ; 
that too is but little for the present, but is a great 
deal for the future. 

" But in darkness beyond the Ocean there are 
other multitudes of souls as impossible to number 
as the sands of the seashore. . . . Xavier, your eye 
is brightening; I know your great heart bleeds when 
it hears of the demon's heavy yoke that weighs 
upon the Indies, upon Japan, upon China, upon the 
African countries, upon America, in a word, upon 
the larger half of the world. . . . 

" You shall go, Xavier ; we shall go, the Com- 
pany of Jesus will go ; it will purchase with the 
blood of its martyrs as many souls as the Church 
has lost in the shipwreck of the Reform, the double, 
and the triple; so that the fold of the Good Shep- 
herd will be full to overflowing. . . . 



THE FIRST VOW. 101 



". . . . Let us praise God. "We are the army of 
God. I say ( we are/ for the work is founded ; it 
has existed since the time when my thoughts no 
longer belonged to me alone and passed from my 
soul into yours. This is our birthday. Here is the 
cradle of our power. The age of this power will 
count for mankind from the fact that gives sanction 
to it ; for ourselves it dates from this very day, con- 
secrated to the Immaculate Queen of angels. We 
know that from the present hour we are the soldiers 
of prayer, of renunciation and of charity. 

" Every army must have a general, we shall have 
a general who will be our earthly chief. Nothing 
in the world will be vaster or more complete than 
his authority, unless it be our liberty. 

"And this liberty and this authority will be 
together perfect obedience, which is the only remedy 
that can break the fever of the time. 

" The obedience I speak of can be defined only 
in naming Him to whom it will be due, in the 
same measure and by the same title from our 
superior-general as from the last one amongst us. 
We shall seek our supreme Chief not here below, 
but in heaven : it will be thou, O Jesus Christ our 
Saviour ! 



102 JESUITS! 



"All authority amongst us shall come from thee, 
and shall be exercised in thee; all obedience shall 
be directed to thee. 

" To obey thee, O God, is to be free, and to com- 
mand in thy holy name is to obey. 

" The tree of faith, the tree of the Cross, has 
two symmetrical branches, authority and obedience : 
both bear the same fruit, liberty. 

" To command, to obey : two sides of the same 
sacrifice! two meanings of the one word, love I 
Jesus, Lord, under thy level he who commands is 
the more humble. He is a servant among servants : 
he belongs to those who belong to thee, and thus 
only, O God Saviour ! in thee, through thee, the 
self-denial of power and the devotion of obedience 
unite in the embrace which gives life to liberty. . . . 

" We are seven to-day : to-morrow, we can be a 
thousand. Our earthly chief must be strong in the 
hand of our divine Master, under the eye of the 
common Father of the faithful. 

" Our house shall not be built for human interests, 
and yet our house shall prosper, even in a fashion 
that is strange to the calling and the intention of the 
order, but which may be necessary according to the 
times, for the fulfilment of its providential work. 

" I know that, I see it, and affirm it. 



THE FIRST VOW. 103 



" I know, I see, I affirm that the earthly chief of 
our order, the general of our peaceful army will be 
mighty among the great ones of the earth, from the 
very depth of his humility. It must be, it will be 
so. Therefore, you shall choose him i intimately 
united to God* so that from the fountain head 
itself, he may be able to obtain an abundance of the 
grace, that through him is to spread out over our 
whole body.' 

" Moreover, by his example he should preach the 
practice of all virtues, and ' above all, the splendor of 
charity : 9 in him should be seen l interior mortifica- 
tion, exterior modesty, circumspection of words, a 
severity tempered with sweetness, an invincible 
courage ' inspired by the word of the apostle St. 
Paul: 'when I am weak, I am strong/ II Cor. 
xii, 10. 

"As for what is called force in human language : 
science, intelligence, discernment, prudence in busi- 
ness, God will provide, because our chief shall be 
the l servant whom the Lord has named/ quern con- 

stituit Dominus, to govern the family He 

seems to be above, but he is really beneath. The 
family bears and weighs down upon him, and he 

* St. Ignatius, Constitutions, Part IX. 



104 JESUITS! 



can say: 'Thou hast placed men upon our heads, 
Lord, imposuisti homines super capita nostra ' * 

" The authority that we are going to confide in 
Jesus Christ to this head of the family will look so 
high and so wide to outsiders, that it will be said : 
1 Nothing similar has ever existed, it is a drove of 
slaves led by a tyrant ; ' and others will go still 
further : ( He is a despot seated on corpses ! ' 

"They are singular slaves who acknowledge no one 
above them but God ! f 

"And whoever attacks the religion of Christ will 
see a movement among those corpses! 

" No, they who will talk thus will be mistaken or 
utter a calumny : in our house there shall not be 
tyrant, slaves, or corpses. There shall be only free 
and living Christians. 

" In fact, election shall guaranty the origin of this 
magnificent, vigorous and extensive power, and 
throughout its whole duration it shall be supported, 
balanced, and checked by the glance of the whole 
assembled family. There shall be no courtiers about 
him : advisers, helpers, judges ! His works shall be 



* Words of Fr. de Ponlevoy, quoted in the admirable book 
of Fr. de Gabriac, La Vie du P. de Ponlevoy, p. 137. 
•j- St. Ignatius, Constitutions , Part VI. 



THE FIRST VOW. 105 



the application of certain and stable laws, not of his 
own making, and which he shall be unable to elude 
or abolish. 

" He shall be able to do all things, it is true, for 
good, but he shall be able to do nothing for evil. 

" He shall be able to do all things : 

" For the greater glory of God, 

" For the better service of souls, 

" For the sanctification of his brethren, 

" For the sacrifice of himself. 

" He shall be able to do nothing against truth, 

" Nothing against justice, 

" Nothing against charity. 

" Above himself there shall be that power which 
people will call absolute: God, the vicar of God, 
the exterior law, that is the State ; the interior law, 
that is the Rule — and the family itself, obedient, but 
sovereign. 

" We are the army of authority, we shall have 
authority. We desire it to be greater than has been 
exercised in any reunion of men here below, but we 
desire liberty : and we shall have it as sincerely and 
more fully than any human society, because we shall 
be nothing in our house where God shall be all. 

"Jesus Christ is our beginning, our middle, and 
our end. 
10 



106 JESUITS! 



" We see Jesus Christ in our general, our general 
sees Jesus Christ in us : Christus omnia in omnibus. 

" Thus our heavenly Master has given me a heri- 
tage for you which is the Rule of Jesus, vast enough 
to contain at once perfect authority and perfect lib- 
erty, as much as is becoming to the sorrowful passage 
of man here below. 

" I see that, I know it, I affirm it. . . . 



" We are seven, we can be a hundred thousand. 
The Rule, permitting authority, kept from any ex- 
cess by the counter-balance of liberty, to exercise its 
uttermost power across our ranks, however dense 
and deep they may be, will fill our whole body with 
that life and that force which war calls discipline, a 
lessened and adapted form of absolutism which is 
obedience. For discipline our army of peace shall 
have that abandonment of self which man owes 
only to God, and which we shall willingly trans- 
fer to a man who shall be for us a figure of the Son 
of God. 



THE FIRST VOW. 107 



" Now is the hour of all times to oppose a dyke 
of our breasts to the murky flood. Prayer suffices 
no longer, we must work, Others assembled in 
other days to imitate Mary of Bethany in her pious 
contemplation at the feet of Jesus. Happy were 
they; let us praise them, let us not imitate them. 

" We ourselves shall be the children of Martha. 
We shall be priests as well as monks, and we shall 
do the work of priests. Study, the confessional, the 
pulpit, the school, and the alms-giving of spiritual 
as well as temporal bread : such will be our task ! 
"Opposing the present evil, preparing future 
good, preaching in the very thick of schism and 
wherever truth is attacked, going to the confines of 
the earth in search of ignorance and error, teaching 
the little ones how to spell, adults to believe, young 
people to think : men, women, all, to love God, 
their country, and their family ; counselling mercy 
to the mighty, resignation, the companion of hope, 
to the weak, generosity to the rich, pardon to the 
poor, teaching all the holy law of charity ; such is 
our life ! 

"To revolt, we shall oppose our vow of obedi- 
ence; to eager selfishness, our vow of poverty; to 
ambition and pride, our vow of humility. 



108 JESUITS! 



u We shall accept money from no one for praying, 
celebrating, preaching, or teaching, and we shall be 
reproached for this, for we shall have other enemies 
than the enemies of the Church. 

" Despite the absence of any stipend, our poverty 
shall erect immense dwellings and shall scatter large 
alms. 

" This will be astonishing, and we shall be accused 
for it. We shall march on, with lowered heads, re- 
gardless of insult, and those who outrage us we shall 
love as ourselves for the love of God. 

"My friends and my children, it is hard to do 
this, and it is especially hard to believe in it. The 
law commanding us to turn the other cheek is un- 
natural and so repugnant to the heart of man that 
when man sees it obeyed, he will insist upon seeing 
nothing but hypocrisy in the impossible sacrifice, or 
cowardice in the heroism that he cannot understand. 

"No man will admit that without God's help it 
needs a thousand times more valor to drink the bit- 
terness of insult than it does to strike down the 
man who insults you. 

"Amongst men we shall be considered swindlers 
for our miracle of poverty ; hypocrites, for our miracle 
of charity; cowards, for our miracle of humility. 

" Glorv to God ! 



THE FIRST VOW. 109 



"Even our death will not disarm ridicule or insult; 
it shall be said of us as was said of our divine Master, 
Jesus, that 'we have played our parts to the end, 
and that our last sigh is our last falsehood/ Glory, 
glory to God alone ! 



" We are the companions of Him who is glorified 
by opprobrium. Praise to the Lord ! Just as our 
indigence will be wealth, and our cowardice a super- 
natural courage, so our abasement will be incompar- 
able power. 

"Kings and nations will come to seek us out 
under the feet of our enemies. Lord, save us from 
pride, whether on the steps of the throne or in the 
depth of our misery ! Glory to God ! All glory to 
God ! To the greater glory of God !...." 



.... He knelt down, and the six imitated him. 
None of them had yet spoken. 
Ignatius raised his clasped hands and said in 
Latin : 

10* 



110 JESUITS! 



— Jesus most patient, 

The others replied in the same language : 

— Have mercy on us. 

— Jesus most obedient, 

— Have mercy on us. 

— Jesus meek and humble of heart, 

— Have mercy on us. 

— Let us pray. — O God, who, by the intercession 
of the Immaculate Virgin, hast illuminated the souls 
of thy servants with the light of the Holy Ghost, 
grant, if it please thee, that their dwelling here 
below may be built for all and not for themselves, 
so that having given their life for the salvation of 
men in Jesus Christ, they may never cease to be 
persecuted for thy greater glory, who livest and 
reignest, world without end. 

— Amen. 

And having made the sign of the cross, they arose. 



The day had now dawned. The people of the 
neighborhood climbed the different paths on their 



TEE FIRST VOW. Ill 



way to mass at the abbey-church. Ignatius and his 
children went to the left of the church, across the 
field that descended from the cemetery, to the martyr's 
chapel whose situation we have described and whose 
environs at that time were entirely uninhabited. 
Alone they entered the crypt that had been pre- 
pared for the holy Sacrifice. Tradition fixes nine 
o'clock as the hour when Father Lefevre celebrated 
mass. 

"After having fasted and prayed together," says 
Cr6tineau-Joly, "they met on the 15th of August, 
1534, in a subterranean chapel of the church of 
Montmartre,* where piety believes f that St. Denis 
was beheaded. It was the Feast of the Assumption 
of the Virgin. Ignatius had chosen that day so 
that the Society might be born in the very bosom of 
Mary triumphant. There, these seven Christians . . . 
to whom Peter Lefevre, already a priest, had given 
communion with his own hands, make a vow to live 
in chastity. They bind themselves to a perpetual 
poverty ; they promise God that after finishing their 
course of theology they will go to Jerusalem . . . ; but 
if at the end of a year, it is not possible for them to 



* A slight error. 

f And impiety too ; witness Dulaure. 



112 JESUITS! 



reach the Holy City (on account of the war), they 
will cast themselves at the feet of the Sovereign 
Pontiff* to ask him existence as an order and to 
receive his commands." 

That was all: the Company of Jesus was founded. 



* Hist, de la Compagnie de Jesus, t. I, p. 26. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 



"With God everything is foreseen; but as there 
is no haste in His eternity, everything moves in 
Him with ripe gravity. Between the first thought 
conceived or rather received by inspiration in the 
grotto of Manresa, and the first word spoken on 
those predestined heights of Montmartre which over- 
look Paris, and from the top of which the wonderful 
temple vowed to the Heart of God will warn the 
world to-morrow, there was an interval of fourteen 
years. 

It was only five years after the word at Mont- 
martre, in the year 1539, that Pope Paul III, 
having examined the abridged formula of the Con- 
stitutions of the new order, presented by Ignatius 
of Loyola, compared by his infallible scrutiny the 
world's menace with the promise of heaven; the 

113 



114 JESUITS! 



danger with the succor; the opening ray of that 
light with the victory of darkness ; and exclaimed : 
"Hie est Dei digitus!"* 

It needed another year before the promulgation of 
the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesioerf which canon- 
ically instituted the Company of Jesus. 

Those who are astonished at these prolonged delays 
may be answered by the text itself of the Constitu- 
tions, where Ignatius takes as much leisure and uses 
as many precautions to make one Jesuit as he does 
to create the entire Company. 

St. Ignatius' respect for his work, as far as it was 
an instrument destined for the special and immediate 
service of Jesus, is a beautiful thing and worthy 
of consideration. No order had demanded such a 
luxury of long and difficult proofs to assure the 
vocation and to test the capacity of its members. 

In his plan really indefatigable effort and patience 
plentifully exercised are the helps and the witnesses 
of God's grace. There everything comes from God 
but by the hard work of man. 

Let us count : it takes a two years' novitiate, with- 
out studies (which supposes a considerable amount of 
previous study), to reach the grade of " scholastic " 

* " Here is the finger of God." f September 27th, 1540. 



THE FIRS T FA THERS. 1 1 5 



or scholar, and in this grade two years are given to 
rhetoric and literature, three years to philosophy 
and the sciences, and at least one year to the 
regency ;* then come four years and sometimes six 
years of theology, and finally the year of the last 
probation, a definite trial undergone in retreat, after 
which one is admitted to be "professed," or a per- 
fect member of the Society of Jesus ; which gives, 
according to Fr. de Eavignan, cited in M. Ad. 
Archier's excellent book, a minimum of fourteen 
years for the real novitiate, — in remembrance per- 
haps of the similar lapse of time which separates 
Manresa from Montmartre in the life of St. Igna- 
tius. 

Another evidence of the studied slowness that pre- 
sided over the first operations of Ignatius and his 
children, is that between the vow of Montmartre 
and the visit to the head of the Church, Ignatius 
admitted but three new recruits into his Company, , 
which increased the total number of the affiliated to 
ten. The three new companions, who after awhile 
were to be not less celebrated than their seniors, 
were Claude Le Jay of Annecy, John Codure of 
Dauphiny, and Paschase Brouet of Picardy. 

* The professorate exercised by the young religious. 



116 JESUITS! 



With their rosary about their neck, and a canticle 
on their lips, along with Lefevre, Xavier, Laynez, 
Rodriguez, Bobadilla, and Salmeron, they accom- 
plished that long pilgrimage on foot across Protestant 
Germany which brought them to Venice where Ig- 
natius awaited them, and whence, after seeing the 
impossibility of reaching Jerusalem, they set out for 
Rome and the Pope. 

There, notwithstanding the Holy Father's good- 
will, they met serious obstacles, and it looks as if 
the strange and stubborn repugnance which was ever 
to check the efforts of the Company of Jesus, began 
with the Company's birth, or even before it. 

At that time Rome had a justifiable mistrust of 
certain religious orders, whose decay had furnished 
many pretexts for the rebellion, and whose apostate 
members, deserting the army of faith, helped to 
swell the ranks of heresy. The evil was so great 
and the fall so deep in many of the cloisters, that 
the same Cardinal Guidiccioni, of whom Paul III 
said, when learning of his decease, " My successor 
has just died," had advised the suppression of all 
but four of the orders. 

To this prelate, who was the principal light of 
his counsels, the Pope entrusted the examination of 
Ignatius' Constitutions, and appointed two com mis- 



THE FIRS T FA THERS. 117 



saries to assist him in the task. Guidiccioni, from 
fear of the evils of the time and not from an exami- 
nation of the new work, replied : " It is not a time 
to institute new orders," and his opinion carried his 
two assessors. 

And in fact, it was not the time to recruit when, 
in the ordinary way of human logic, a general sup- 
pression was taking place. 

But there was something in these ten men that 
was not human. Instead of protesting against their 
decision, they praised God, and offered themselves 
to whoever would take them for the service of God, 
asking nothing, and walking with the same step 
in the route of their resolute faith. • 

They separated obediently, and went to encounter 
the sectaries in close conflict : Lefevre and Laynez, 
to Parma ; Bobadilla, to the island of Ischia ; Le 
Jay, to Brescia, attacked by the plague; Paschase 
Brouet, to Sienna, where the revolt broke out in the 
convents of the nuns. Codure went to Padua, Francis 
Xavier and Rodriguez, to Lisbon, to hasten the prep- 
arations for an expedition destined to immortalize 
the name of the Apostle of the Indies. 

It came to pass that Cardinal Guidiccioni, was 
constantly surrounded and urged by echoes of the 
humble renown of these industrious workmen labor- 
11 



118 JESUITS! 



ing everywhere at the same time. Truly, like John 
the Baptist, before his birth, the Company of Jesus, 
leaped and was felt in the womb of its Mother, the 
Church ! 

At last the learned cardinal who, like Zachary, 
had been a little incredulous, opened his eyes. He 
examined Ignatius' work, which he had been wrong 
to repel without reading, and as soon as he had ex- 
amined it, still, like Zachary, he intoned a canticle. 
The man who was the first to proclaim the neces- 
sity of suppressing most of the religious orders, and 
of lessening those which might be retained, openly 
declared it to be good, opportune, and "indispensable" 
to authorize'the Company of Jesus, in order to oppose 
corruption within, and resist attacks from without. 

The bull contained a clear and exact summary of 
the Constitutions, and thus gave great breadth to the 
Holy See's approbation. Ignatius' thought was 
sanctioned not only in its entirety, but in its details, 
and the institution became, as it were, a creation of 
the Church herself. 

Upon the promulgation of the bull, they proceeded 
to the election of general. The service of religion 
kept most of the members far from Rome. Those 
who were absent voted by writing. The others, Le 
Jay, Salmeron, Laynez, Codure, and Brouet assem- 



TEE FIB ST FATHERS. 119 



bled about Ignatius. Three days were given to 
fasting and prayer to implore the light of the Holy 
Ghost, and on the fourth day, by the unanimous 
voice of present and absent, Ignatius of Loyola was 
elected General, or " preposed," to use the terms of 
the bull. 

Ignatius might have expected this, and yet he was 
frightened by it. Disobeying for the first and last 
time, without altogether refusing the charge imposed, 
which would have been a direct violation of the rule 
instituted by himself, he at least contended with all 
his might against the unanimous will of his brethren, 
and required a new election which resulted as before. 

At this he burst into tears, for he" thoroughly 
understood the extent of his responsibility — but he 
consented. He was then entering on his fiftieth 
year, and had been four years a priest. 

" On Easter Sunday, April 17th, 1540, he accepted 
the government of the Company of Jesus. The 22d 
of the same month, after visiting the basilicas of 
Rome, Ignatius and his companions arrived at that 
of St. Paul beyond the walls. The General cele- 
brated mass at the Virgin's altar, and then having 
communicated, turned towards the people. In one 
hand he held the sacred Host, and in the other the 
formula of the vows. He pronounced this formula 



120 JESUITS! 



in a loud voice, binding himself to obedience with 
regard to the missions as specified in the bull of the 
27th of September. Then he placed five Hosts on 
the patena, and approaching Laynez, Le Jay, Brouet, 
Codure, and Salmeron, who were kneeling at the foot 
of the altar, he received their profession and gave 
them communion." * 



"What did I see during the seven years that I 
lived in the house of the Jesuits? The most labor- 
ious and frugal life, the whole time taken up with 
the cares they bestowed on us, and the exercises of 
their austere profession. I affirm that thousands of 
men have been brought up like myself; and there- 
fore I never cease to be astonished that people should 
accuse them of a corrupting system of morals." 
These words were written a long while after th 
foundation of the order, and I quote them here 
because it has been often said, that if the Company 
of Jesus had a brilliant beginning it soon gave way 
to demoralization. 



* Cretineau-Joly, t. I", p. 50. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 121 



The Jesuits had been fighting in the front rank 
of the Church's army for two hundred years, when 
Voltaire wrote those lines in the month of February, 
1746. They do honor to Voltaire, and they do no 
more than justice to the Jesuits who were attacked 
on all sides by calumny. 

Voltaire " never ceases to be astonished " that 
people should calumniate them. He is easily aston- 
ished. Everywhere, but especially with us, those 
who are accustomed to following the current and to 
directing the movements of philosophical and polit- 
ical passion, ought rather to be astonished that such 
men can cease to be calumniated. 

It is the practice with their accusers to exempt 
the birth of the Institute from their charges, and to 
treat the founders with a show of courteous impar- 
tiality. The first years were fine, and pure, and 
great, that they admit; only that the sequel did not 
keep the promises made at the beginning, this their 
accusers affirm and regret. 

We shall briefly relate the history of this sequel, 
just as we have in a few words set forth the simplicity 
of the facts which brought about the conception and 
birth. Only before continuing this narrative, des- 
tined at times to turn into a historical discussion, we 
beg to call attention to a strange fact : 
11* 



122 JESUITS! 



Each epoch of the Jesuits' social life receives, 
sometimes from one and sometimes from another of 
their sworn detractors, a little of the satisfecit ac- 
corded to the innocence of their cradle ; each episode 
of the great drama they have played as an order, has 
its apologists amongst the ranks of their bitterest 
adversaries, and we are thus startled every moment 
by hearing some Protestant, or philosopher, or even 
atheist defending the Companions of Jesus from 
some particular iniquitous charge of which they are 
the victims; so that if we should string together 
these special defences, these acknowledgments of par- 
tiality, these generous rebuttals of stupid prejudice, 
we should have a very strange but particularly curi- 
ous and complete panegyric of Loyola's posterity. 

Every one has done like Voltaire. Every one, 
after having condemned and ridiculed the Jesuits 
in general and abundantly, has exclaimed some fine 
day when hearing too gross an error or a count in 
the indictment whose absurdity was beyond bounds, 
"Stop! all the rest is true, but that I cannot believe!" 

Now as this is that for the one critic and recipro- 
cally for the other, this and that are beyond belief, 
that is to say all is beyond belief! 

By looking closely you will find apologetic bribes 
even in the archives of Port-Royal, though they are 



THE FIBS T FA THFBS. 123 



furnished with a better assortment of insults than 
the Encyclopaedia's shop itself. 

And if it is thus with men who are assailants by 
profession, what shall we say of men of the world ? . . . 

I hesitate here and dare not be so positive. 

When it comes to the indifferent, we must always 
look for less honesty than where there is passion ; 
something fickle and willingly treacherous, politely 
called prudence, but, frankly, mere poltroonery. 

You will never hear one of these indifferent people, 
who are so wise in their own business, defend the 
Jesuits unless moved to it by some interest of his 
own. The wise ones of this sort abandon the Jesuits 
for good nature's sake and "for the good of re- 
ligion." 

They know the story of that good Russian mother 
who, seeing that her sledge was followed by a pack 
of wolves, from time to time threw over one of her 
little ones " to save the others." 

They have been told that this good mother having 
thus thrown over the last of her children, herself 
escaped the danger. 

It is not true. They have lied to these people. 
I say, upon my honor, that mother was eaten up, 
and she deserved her fate. 



124 JESUITS! 



The wisdom of the wise people I am talking about 
is called interest. Interest is composed of a little 
religion, not much, of whatever honesty they may 
have, of the rank they occupy, of the fortune they 
enjoy, and of the existence to which they hold quite 
naturally. 

The wolves are around them, and pursuing them, 
here as well as in Russia. 

If they throw the Jesuits to the wolves, there 
remain religion, honor, rank, fortune, life ; and even 
if they should fling away religion, there would re- 
main honesty, which, along with fortune and rank, 
may suffice to live on. 

If the wolves should attack honesty. . . . 

Listen ! honesty is a vague thing as generally un- 
derstood? And there are so many kinds of it! And 
then we must bribe the wolves. 

Rank, indeed it is growing serious ! It is time 
for a little courage. We must defend our rank, if 
we can. 

And people will die rather than lose their fortune! 

There is the word : They will die ! 

They will die from the first concession which en- 
couraged the wolves. 



TEE FIRST FATHERS. 125 



Nevertheless, for the indifferent, as well as for 
believers, and even for atheists, what is a Jesuit ? 

He is a monk. 

And what is a monk ? 

He is a man who, in order to draw nearer to that 
God he believes in, of his own choice makes certain 
sacrifices, willingly accepts certain duties laid down 
by a rule and assured by vows that are consecrated 
by the solemn approval of an authority recognized 
by law in Catholic countries, under the name of the 
Church. 

What is more legitimate in a human point of 
view ? What more clearly lawful use can a citizen 
make of his liberty ? Under what pretext, by what 
right should he be hindered or restrained in the exer- 
cise of that liberty ? 

You think it useful and proper to seek the goods 
of the earth, it is your right ; it pleases me to shun 
them, it is my right. 

You think it useful and proper to found a family, 
found it, you have the right; as for me, I am willing 
to renounce the joys of home out of devotion to God 
and my fellow man, my right is equal to yours. 

You think it useful and proper to keep your full 
independence, that is permitted ; I am afraid of mine 
and set bounds to it, is that forbidden ? 



126 JESUITS! 



Certainly not, unless it is intended to conjure 
up so ridiculous and hateful a tyranny, that for 
examples of it we are compelled to turn over the 
leaves of the worst and most unclean volume of 
our annals. 

So speaks common sense, reason joins in the 
chorus, faith assents, the Church approves. And 
what says history? 

Does it deny that the modern life has come from 
Christ? 

No. History shows us the first Christians of 
Jerusalem laying their goods at the Apostles' feet in 
order to live in common and in poverty ; the Egyp- 
tian deserts peopled with cenobites ; the East sancti- 
fied by the men of the desert; the West by the 
children of the Austins, of the Benedicts, of the 
Brunos, of the Dominies, those fathers of families 
of workmen who have enlightened Europe, civi- 
lized barbarism, polished rudeness, preserved the 
treasure of literature, revived the arts, founded cities 
and filled the world with benefits, and upon whom 
the world has lavished its scorn, and its ignorance, 
and its ingratitude's hatred. 

As a monk, then, the Jesuit is neither a novelty 
nor a monstrosity. There were monks before 
him. 



TEE FIRST FATHERS. 127 



But, say they : " he is a monk sui generis, having 
a special end, a manner of being that is peculiar 
to him ; tendencies, obligations, customs, which 
distinguish him from all other monks. . . ." 

To be sure ! he is a Jesuit, not a Carthusian, Bene- 
dictine, or Franciscan, just as a cannoneer is a soldier, 
a cuirassier also, and a hussar too, without its follow- 
ing that a cuirassier is a hussar, or a hussar a can- 
noneer, or a cannoneer a cuirassier. 

The Carthusian in solitude prays for the world he 
has left, the Trappist sanctifies the noble and rugged 
labor of the fields by his penance, the Benedictine 
spends his life in the arid researches of science, and 
it is well ; others go beyond the sea to civilize the 
barbarism of Asia and Africa, the savages of America 
and of Oceanica, or, with not less valor, they battle 
in Europe for truth against error, for the liberty of 
souls against man's despotism and the tyranny of the 
passions: is this wrong? 

The Company of Jesus has never denied that it 
has a particular destiny. 

It is its glory to have been instituted with a pre- 
cise and clearly defined end. It is a sacred battalion, 
or it is not. It boasts that it is. 

We have seen that beginning with the XYIth 
century, there was an overturning of ideas ; the spirit 



128 JESUITS! 



of revolt, like a violent wind, breathed upon the 
world, and, after first agitating the Church, it dis- 
turbed political institutions and the very foundations 
of society. 

These great storms, whose effects we still feel, have 
famous names in history ; they are called Protestant- 
ism, Jansenism, Philosophism, and the Revolution. 

Luther, armed with his mutilated Bible, rises up 
against the Church, and gives the astonished world 
the spectacle of his victory, rapid as disaster always 
is, and as unreal, in seeming, as a bad dream. — But 
Luther finds the Jesuits in front of him, and his 
victory wanes. 

Jansenius poorly conceals the cloven foot of his 
hypocritical and bastard Protestantism between the 
pages of his contraband Augustinus. The Jesuits 
bar his route, and he cannot pass. 

The philosophers of the XVIIIth century tear 
the Bible to pieces, undermine tradition and prepare 
to " strike down Vinf&me" The Jesuits move into 
action . . . they fall, betrayed by the royal authority 
they were defending, but the earth quakes after their 
fall, royal authority is engulphed, and God deposed 
appears to turn away His eyes, so as not to see the 
queen of nations dishonored in the horrible red mud 
of the saturnalia that defile history. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 129 



Was God conquered ? No. Was Vinfdme crushed ? 
No. The one is as impossible as the other, — but the 
Jesuits ? 

Ah ! certainly the Jesuits can die, they do not par- 
take of God's eternity nor of the Church's immor- 
tality in time. — But they live. Do you want a proof 
of it? Count their enemies. Would there be so 
much lively hatred around a tomb ? 



Now I understand this hatred and the people who 
harbor it. It is natural and almost legitimate for 
Protestants to hate the Jesuits; and this is easy 
enough to understand among the obscure remains of 
Jansenism, and also for the worn-out posterity of the 
XVIIIth century philosophers, and above all for 
the unfortunate flood of those who are eternally de- 
ceived and who are incessantly worked upon by 
industrious politicians, — but the others? who are 
not Protestants, Jansenists, philosophers, politicians, 
or the dupes of politicians? 

Will they ever understand that there are times 
when Truth, fleeing in its sledge, has no right to 
oast before the wolf God, the Church, or even the 
12 



130 JESUITS! 



Jesuits, because once the wolf has eaten, he will eat 



ain ! 



The Jesuits, however, ask mercy from no one. 
Fearless in the knowledge of their duty, they reso- 
lutely render to Csesar what belongs to Caesar and 
to God what belongs to God. 

Why should they fear, who are born for danger 
and are the children of the promised persecution? 

They must live to fight, and death dissolves all 
vows, even that of heroism. And because they 
cannot fear TO die they shall live. 



If there were need of proof of the necessity of 
Ignatius 7 foundation, it would be found in abundance 
in the rapidity of its first development. The Com- 
panions of Jesus were ten, the bull of institution 
limited their number to sixty, and only a few months 
passed when the Sovereign Pontiff was obliged to 
undo this limitation, the last vestige of Cardinal 
Guidiccioni's "prejudicial" repugnance. 

The narrow scope of this book will not permit us 
to do full homage to the holy career of the first ten 
Jesuits, all of them eloquent orators, unequalled pro- 



/ 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 131 



fessors, accomplished theologians, remarkable writers, 
zealous apostles of charity, doughty defenders of 
truth; for we could scarcely follow each one of 
them along his route before we had entered upon 
the general current of events along with the 
Company. 

Loyola, the centre and soul of the Society, almost 
disappears, as far as personal works are concerned, 
right after his exaltation. His activity is great but 
is lost in the common movement that he directs. 
He had said in his Constitutions : " The general's 
duty shall not be i to preach/ nor to turn himself 
into a soldier, but i to govern.' " 

James Laynez, a man of admirable mind, who 
seems, with Lef£vre and Xavier, to have had the 
most intimate part in Loyola's confidence and to have 
been his collaborator, indefinitively drawing up the 
Rule, was sent first to Venice, where the struggle 
that he opened against heresy so aroused the popular 
enthusiasm, that crowds slept at the doors of the 
churches so as not to miss his preaching. After 
driving error from Venice he won the same triumphs 
at Padua and at Brescia. 

I happened one day to look for the name of Laynez 
in an otherwise respectable historical dictionary re- 
commended to youth, and I found it, incorrectly 



132 JESUITS! 



spelled, below the name of the singer Lais who had 
a very fine article. Only two lines were given to 
Laynez. And yet he was one of the lights of the 
Council of Trent, before illumining the colloquy at 
Poissy, and his noble humility in refusing the cardi- 
nal's hat, so often an object of passionate ambition, 
perhaps deserved to be mentioned. 

Peter Lefevre followed Ortiz, the ambassador ot 
Charles V, who was returning to his master, and 
the disputants of Germany constantly avoided any 
encounter with him because of the reputation for 
science and eloquence that had preceded him. But 
he had heavy toil, followed by considerable results, 
for he succeeded in strengthening the faith of those 
Catholics who had been disturbed and unsettled by 
the contagion that surrounded them ; he was the 
court-preacher at Ratisbon, where many conversions 
followed his preaching; he continued his apostolate 
in Spain, and having returned to the banks of the 
Rhine, he was made professor of Holy Scripture at 
Mayence, where he lectured with a splendor and an 
authority that checked the archbishop-elector of Co- 
logne, Hermann de Weide, whose imminent desertion 
would have drawn away his flock. Wonderful effect 
of eloquent charity! With the flock, Lefevre saved 
the shepherd. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 133 



He has hardly won this double victory before he 
sails to Portugal, and again journeys over the entire 
peninsula and founds the college of Valladolid. The 
letter calling him to the Council of Trent finds him 
overcome with fever in the midst of his labors. " It 
is not necessary to live/ 7 said he, full of the predom- 
inant thought of his Order, " but it is necessary to 
obey/' and in spite of the prayers of his pupils, he 
delayed not till he was in Ignatius' arms at Home, 
where he came to die joyfully. 

Le Jay and Bobadilla replaced Laynez in Ger- 
many, and like him, both refused the honor of the 
episcopate. It was Le Jay who answered the Luth- 
erans, when they threatened to drown him in the 
Danube: "If I reach heaven, what matters it whether 
I go by land or water?" 

They were even witty. 

Salmeron, too, the Benjamin of the brethren of 
Montmartre, made his way across the invading hordes 
of Protestantism. After Lefevre's death, with Lay- 
nez he was chosen papal theologian to take part in 
the discussions of that council where the Roman 
Church was to show itself as strong and as lively 
as ever. 

Le Jay sat there, also, as theologian to the bishop 
of Augsburg. 
12* 



134 JESUITS! 



Scarcely born, the Company saw its humble chil- 
dren sitting among the princes of the Church, and 
they were not unworthy of their place among the 
chosen, for the bishop of Modena wrote : " Fathers 
Salmeron and Laynez have discoursed so splen- 
didly on the Eucharist, that I think myself happy 
to be living near those learned and saintly Fath- 
ers." * 

A book made up of nothing but the history of the 
ten first Jesuits, would be a good one, and would 
everywhere have to do with the great ecclesiastical 
events of this portion of the XVIth century : to say 
nothing of Francis Xavier. 

On Francis Xavier one might write a poem that 
would be the epic of charity, but we have barely 
space to make a mere sketch of that wonderful life. 

At the beginning, or rather before the Order was 
constituted, Xavier and Rodriguez had been called 
by John III of Braganza, king of Portugal, to make 
the Gospel known beyond the ocean. 

We remember Ignatius' words to Xavier, speaking 
of the missionary's joys and dangers: "Xavier your 
eye is brightening. . . ." The apostolic vocation of 
the young scholar of the University of Paris had 

* Hint, de la Compagnie, Ad. Archier, p. 39. 



TEE FIRST FATHERS. 135 



continued to grow from that time. He received the 
order for his departure enthusiastically, and would 
have undertaken the journey without the necessary 
raiment had not Loyola put his own cloak upon his 
shoulders. 

Although a learned doctor he had preserved all 
the impulsiveness of childhood. This union of frank 
vivacity and serious wisdom lent a powerful charm 
to his presence, and there seemed a something about 
him that was above nature. John of Braganza tried 
to keep him at the Portuguese Court, for the young 
apostle's zeal had won all hearts to God, but the 
treasures of his speech were for neither princes nor 
courtiers. 

On the 7th of April, 1 540, he set sail on a vessel 
of the Indian fleet, five months before the signing of 
the bull. Fathers Camerino and Mansella embarked 
with him. 

He arrived in the roadstead of Goa in the month 
of May of the following year, after a long and dan- 
gerous voyage, during which he had excited the 
piety, the courage, and the gayety of all. It was 
during this voyage that he first got the name of 
" Holy Father," which was always afterward ap- 
plied to him alike by Mahommedans, idolators, and 
Christians. 



136 JESUITS! 



The name of Christian, beautiful and glorious in 
itself, was not calculated to win the confidence of the 
unfortunate conquered people. In the native's mind 
the name of Christian was joined to greedy, cruel, 
dissolute, vicious; aye, criminal traffickers. 

The oppression practiced by the Portuguese mer- 
chants in India was carried to a hideous excess, and 
it seems as though Europe extended her conquests 
in all directions only 9 to spread the leprosy of her 
sordid and corrupt avarice. 

Xavier preached to the merchants before preaching 
to the savages, and said to them : " In the name of 
God do you wish me to ask those people, who have 
no other fault than their blindness, to become like 
you who are full of iniquity? " 

There are certainly no more difficult subjects for 
moral teaching than those colonies of covetous ad- 
venturers sent forth during the last four hundred 
years by our old civilizations, to seek their fortune 
in the Indies or in the New World, and above all 
others, the adventurers from the Peninsula, Spanish 
as well as Portuguese, had deserved their evil re- 
nown ; but there was a victorious emotion in the 
words of Francis Xavier, and a strong irresistible 
persuasion in his heart, that drew the traders of Goa, 
who were at first irritated at his audacity, though 



THE FIBST FATHERS. 137 



they ended by surrendering. A repenting fever 
broke out in that Babylon, and among the many 
miracles of Xavier's apostolate, this was certainly 
the greatest. 

To convert a Portuguese trading station in the 
Indies was more difficult — contemporaries deemed 
it so — than to conquer all barbarous India for the 
faith. 

As soon as Xavier had overcome this obstacle all 
ways seemed easy to him, and he could smile and 
say, as he stood in the midst of the murderous priests 
of Sivah themselves : " With the help of God I have 
conquered the merchants of Goa ! " 

With one bound he landed at Cape Comorin and 
entered Paravao by a miracle. A dying woman was 
cured by the mere touch of his crucifix, and thou- 
sands of the natives gathered around him " listening 
to his signs," understanding his unknown language. 
He had presaged the magic of the cross, and he now 
saw its prodigies ; his crucifix talked for him while 
he was learning the Malabar tongue, and many a 
day after he had acquired the language, when he 
was overcome by the fatigue of his incessant preach- 
ing, he would sound his famous little bell with one 
hand and brandish the image of the martyr-God in 
the other, and would be surrounded by entire vil- 



138 JESUITS! 



lages who bent their heads under the waters of 
baptism. 

It frequently happened to him — so great was his 
fatigue — that he could no longer raise his arms to 
pour the blessed water on the forehead of the troops 
of catechumens, who came at the end of his rich 
day's work. 

His heart swam in torrents of joy and the song of 
his gladness broke from his lips; he underwent cold, 
heat, hunger, disease ; his naked feet were torn by 
the thorns and briers on his way, but he complained 
of nothing, or rather he enjoyed everything; he kept 
on his way tireless and invulnerable; on the earth 
he walked as if already in heaven. 

At night, instead of resting, he spent the time in- 
structing those who were to be his helpers, and 
sometimes a sudden stillness would come upon his 
simple audience; every one held his breath, and a 
merry, good-natured sign would be made from one 
to another, as if to say : " Don't waken him !...." 

This was because the " Holy Father," overcome 
by fatigue, had closed his eyes in spite of himself, 
and his sympathizing class — young savages who were 
learning to be martyrs — lengthened as much as they 
could the chance moments that relieved their beloved 
master from his labors. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 139 



So great a respect and so lively an admiration 
surrounded him, that he was compelled to de- 
stroy the idea held by his disciples that he was 
a God! 

In the meantime his whole mission grew with 
marvellous rapidity. At the end of two years the 
crop of auxiliaries that he had planted was almost 
ripe. At Goa, which was his headquarters, he 
founded a seminary ; his first priests are now ready ; 
to-day he can attempt what seemed impossible yes- 
terday, and now he penetrates still further and 
further, for he is no longer alone. In the Tre- 
vancor, in a few weeks, he baptized ten thousand 
with his own hand, 

"You shall not strike," had said Ignatius. By 
the veneration of the crucifix Xavier put armies to 
flight, and when an idolatrous village stubbornly 
refused to hear him, he asks of God the power to 
raise up Lazarus, and it is given him. 

After this miracle, attested in the acts of St. Fran- 
cis Xavier's canonization, all the Trevancor became 
Christian. 

Ignatius was at Rome when his tenderly loved 
son's letters came, announcing his triumphs and 
asking for soldiers to help him gain another lot of 
victories. 



140 JESUITS! 



Ignatius made haste. The recruits were embarked 
at Lisbon, but Xavier did not await them. He 
presses forward again ; see the grace that follows 
him: he is at the island of Manar, then at Melia- 
pore; he reaches Malacca, besieged by the king of 
Asham, and his presence there is better than an 
army. . . . India belongs to him \ 

India no longer suffices him. A mysterious finger 
points him to Japan ; he hastens there, accompanied 
only by three missionaries. It was then nine years 
since he had left Europe, and he had not rested a 
day. 

His arrival in India had been modest; the ship 
that landed him at Firando in Japan was saluted by 
all the artillery in the roadstead. That, however, 
was not a certain augury of success. It is true ob- 
stacles did not appear at once, for Xavier reached 
the capital and there preached unmolested, but the 
strange character and profoundly corrupt manners 
of the Meaquins, for a moment disconcerted the man 
who had never before been checked ; he regrets 
India, and it needs all the valor of his resignation 
to harden himself for the work which seems to him 
impossible. He redoubles his efforts. 

At last, God who has heard his prayers and seen 
his tears fits the recompense to the sacrifice : after 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 141 



two years of suffering that cost him his life, Xavier 
is master of Japan. 

Will he stop here ? No. He will never stop. 
He changes his route. He has turned his eyes 
towards that great unknown : China. Before enter- 
ing on this gigantic campaign, he returns once more 
to Goa, where he finds that India numbers half a 
million of Christians. " Glory to God ! this is a fine 
harvest, let us sow other fields." And he embarks 
for China. 

But wonderfully great as was this apostle, formed 
after the pattern of those who first enlightened the 
world, God had assigned his task and appointed his 
repose. The voyage was to be a sorrowful one ; as 
ever, Xavier labors hard but is at last overcome ; 
after great pain he is put ashore in a dying condi- 
tion, in a land that is not China. His hour has 
come, and his companions surround him weeping ; 
he presses his crucifix to his breast and dies sing- 
ing the last strophe of St. Ambrose's canticle: 
u In te, Domine, speravi; non eonfundar in ceter- 



* u In thee, Lord, have I hoped; I shall never be con- 
founded." 



13 



142 JESUITS! 



He was forty-five, his apostolate had lasted twelve 
years. His memory is honored by the Church 
among the greatest of the saints. 

Of all Francis Xavier's missions, the Japanese 
one was the most productive of martyrs, for thou- 
sands of the native faithful and more than a hundred 
Jesuit fathers there bore witness to the faith by their 
tortures.* 

Ignatius survived Xavier four years ; he was the 
last of the three scholars of Sainte-Barbe. He shed 
tears of sorrowful joy on learning of his brother and 
friend's beautiful death. 

His work took on the proportions of an empire. 
To mention only his distant conquests, three years 
before Xavier's death, just at the moment when he 
was carrying light into Japan, six members of the 
Company of Jesus landed in Brazil, and worked 
with so good an effect, that their popularity every- 
where overbalanced the hatred aroused by Portuguese 
commerce. Acting as mediators between the two 
barbarisms, one civilized and the other uncivilized, 
the Fathers had less trouble with the cannibals than 
with those whose appetites craved gold, for they were 
at last able to abolish the atrocious feasts of the man- 

* The Church honors thirty-six of them as martyrs. 



TEE FIRST FATHERS. 143 



eaters, but they could not cure the inextinguishable 
thirst of wealth that consumed the Europeans. 

The Portuguese colony of San Salvador ruled 
by the cannon, but the noble and learned Father 
Anchieta's companions won all by love, and more 
than once the men of the cannon, suppliant and 
frightened, took shelter behind the men of charity, 
who never refused them protection. 

Later on, the Portuguese metropolis was to take 
revenge for so many benefits lavished on its colonists, 
and it was at Lisbon that the sinister slayer of the 
Fathers {matador dos Padres), Sebastian de Pombal, 
in the height of the philosophical X Vlllth century, 
was to wall up their dungeons and put the torch to 
their faggots ! 

In 1553 the ascendency of the Company in 
South America was so great that Ignatius created 
a " Province of Brazil," as he had already created 
the " Province of the Indies " for the East. 

At the same time, Ignatius sent a holy embassy 
to Fez and to Morocco, to negotiate the liberation of 
slaves. Ah ! hatred had fine play, and the character 
of the Jesuits was becoming plain in its hateful 
grandeur. 

Other Jesuits penetrated Ethiopia and reached 
Congo, to find or to make Christians. For a while 



144 JESUITS! 



the kings of Abyssinia were Catholics, but the 
Protestant missionaries came, and the country was 
plunged back into idolatry. 

God forbid that we should misjudge the con- 
sciences of Protestants in general. We are only 
stating the obstacles they have so often opposed to 
the spread of the true faith, and the utter useless- 
ness everywhere of the efforts made by their poor 
copies of Catholic missions — and this in spite of the 
enormous material resources at their disposal. 

The apostles make a vow of poverty and they 
succeed ; the bible distributor has millions of wealth 
and fails. 

Ignatius was more than sixty years old. Despite 
the care he took to hide his life he was illustrious 
among the men of his time. From his cell he exer- 
cised great influence on events, and though he did 
not assist in person at the Council of Trent or at 
the colloquy of Poissy, though he never crossed the 
threshold of princely palaces, his mind and his word 
were everywhere, in the public eloquence of as- 
semblies and in the closed cabinets of kings and 
rulers. 

He had accomplished more than he had promised, 
and on all sides he was abused by the Church's 
enemies, and denounced as the real stumbling-block 
of the Reformation. 



THE FIRST FATHERS. 145 



For a moment, he desired the repose that laborers 
enjoy at the end of their day. 

But those who venerated him, reminded him, and 
not without a little severity, that he who has engaged 
his life must expect no rest before death. 

He obeyed. He rested. He died General of the 
Company on the 31st of July, 1556. 

During his life he never said " I have done," but 
" I have seen." He had seen heresy not conquered 
but completely checked in its fearful progress, and 
he had seen infidel countries adding more souls to 
the communion of the faithful than the combined 
labor of all the false prophets of that century, so 
fraught with strange convulsions, had taken from it. 

He had seen reform, real Catholic reform, every- 
where at work in the Church, already producing 
admirable results. 

To find what part he bore in these great affairs, 
we must not consult him or his religious posterity. 
This would be to use a suspicious testimony. We 
must turn over the mountain of " documents " gath- 
ered by hatred and dislike. Here the abuseful lan- 
guage of a wounded enemy glorifies the soldier who 
has given the wound; each insult is an honor; 
Loyola and the Jesuits of his time have the patents 
of nobility in the writing of Protestants. 
13* 



146 JESUITS! 



Twenty-two years less two weeks after that morn- 
ing of Assumption when we saw the crippled beggar 
climbing the ascent of Montmartre all alone, at the 
moment when Ignatius, an old man, and still a 
beggar, though not alone, gave up his great mind 
and his beautiful soul to God, he could see, with the 
great sight of the saints, thirty houses, eighty col- 
leges, more than a thousand Fathers and a hundred 
thousand scholars, bearing his sign and scattered 
over the surface of the earth. 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 



Before entering upon this history in France, it is 
just as well to finish with that great movement of 
evangelization splendidly begun by Francis Xavier, 
continued by the heroism of his successors, and which 
was to last as long as the order itself. 

Xavier died without crossing the mysterious bar- 
rier that separated China from the rest of the uni- 
verse. In 1556, and the first of all the Jesuits, 
Melchior Nunez, contrived to make an entrance 
along with the Portuguese merchants. He reached 
Canton, a great city whose wealth filled him with 
astonishment. 

Xavier, no doubt, had spoken of this step, but 
Xavier had the gift of miracles. With a prudence 
imitated for a long while and with good results, 
Father Melchior refrained from all public preaching, 

147 



148 JESUITS! 



fearing that he might close this door that jealous 
distrust had only half opened. Chinese law and 
customs sharpened the wits. 

In 1563, five Jesuits accompanied the Portuguese 
embassy and were equally reserved. 

Matthew Ricci was the first to get as far as the 
court of Pekin, and he not only began but spread 
afar the evangelization of the Celestial empire, where 
the Company of Jesus was to gather so many heroic 
palms. 

Ricci was a pupil of Father Valignani, the sino- 
logue missionary, or rather the grammarian of all 
the extreme Eastern languages. The history of this 
education and of the care taken by Valignani to 
prepare his young apostles for the. conquest of mar- 
tyrdom, is one of the most touching and curious 
pages that can be read. 

In his Histoire de VOrdre de Matte, an old but 
attractive book, the Abbe" de Vertot relates an ad- 
venture of Dieudonne de Gozon, the future grand 
master of Rhodes, who, to make sure of his victory 
over a certain monster, a dragon or serpent, that he 
had promised to expel from the island, had a likeness 
of the dreadful animal constructed, and accustomed 
his pack of hounds to dash upon this image. Up 
to that time all the daring fellows who had attacked 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 149 



the monster had been devoured, because it was cov- 
ered with scales stronger than any cuirass. This 
armor was of a bronze color and defied the lance; 
the knight Dieudonne" had observed a bare place 
under the belly of the dragon, a large spot of a pale 
yellow, and he conceived a stratagem which Abbe 
Vertot very reasonably proclaims ingenious. 

He made a hole under the belly of his image, of 
the same shape and size as the yellow spot, and he 
closed this hole with a door painted exactly the color 
of the spot. This door opened by a balance weight. 
When all this had been done, the knight let his pack 
of hounds go hungry, and placed quarters of meat 
inside the counterfeit monster. The hounds, as may 
be imagined, were no sooner near the pasteboard 
dragon than they snuffed the pleasant odor of what 
was inside, and threw themselves upon the yellow 
door, which, after a slight resistance, gave way and 
admitted them to a cheerful repast. 

For a whole month the knight repeated this exer- 
cise, until at last the pack had formed a sincere 
affection for the yellow door that opened to their 
breakfast. At the end of the month the good knight 
let his hounds go hungry for three days and then 
he led them, not to the counterfeit, but to the real 
dragon, which vomited fire and smoke as was its 



150 JESUITS! 



habit; to this the dogs paid no sort of attention; 
they were looking for their breakfast. 

And when the monster, in one of his movements, 
displayed the livid spot on his belly, they recognized 
their yellow door and entered. 

I do not know whether Father Valignani, before 
Vertot's time, had any knowledge of this exploit, 
but certainly his plan of campaign, laboriously ar- 
ranged, has some resemblance to the knight Dieu- 
donne's. 

He too trained a pack, a pack of heroes to pene- 
trate the entrails of a monster whose body was 
defended by scales: China, that land of unreality, 
of strange impossibilities, an unchanging enigma, 
shut against the eager curiosity of all the rest of 
the world, so that the imagination of the romantic 
poems had pictured it as a vast enchanted palace 
girdled by a wall of steel. 

Father Valignani's pack was hungry, hungry for 
merciful devotion, civilizing efforts, science, combat, 
martyrdom. The monster, steel-cased from head to 
foot, had a weak place, a yellow spot, somewhat 
hidden under its belly, but which nevertheless was 
a door and might be opened. 

This defect in the Chinese cuirass was a growing 
thirst of knowledge, an inborn curiosity, a practical 



A OLANGE AT THE MISSIONS. 151 



but subtile disposition for everything pertaining to 
mathematics, astronomy, physics, or even philosophy. 

The whole life of Father Valignani, an apostle- 
maker as Warwick had been a king-maker, was 
passed in front of this closed door, seeking the means 
of opening it, and of firmly establishing those who 
might at last succeed in making an entrance. 

Is there not something absolutely wonderful here? 
And where else but in the institute of the Jesuits, 
original in its greatness, could we find a like employ- 
ment of special aptitudes. 

In our own days, Charles Fourier, a man of un- 
doubted talent, but of no influence because he ignored 
God and God's morals in constructing his ingenious 
child's-play which he called a phalaustery, imagined 
that he had discovered a theory of the culture of 
vocations in the sphere of social utility. 

He had not read St. Ignatius, who to be sure did 
not claim to be an inventor, and wasted no precious 
time in building houses of cards, but who by prayer 
won from heaven that sacred fire : the science of 
hearts. Before, as since Fourier, the Company of 
Jesus had run and still runs its skilful fingers up 
and down the key-board of attractions and aptitudes, 
with a view to universal peace and final salva- 
tion. 



152 JESUITS! 



Among; those whom Father Valignani prepared 
for the strange and difficult fencing, which no one 
before could have dreamed of, the young Fathers 
Pazio, Ruggieri, and Matthew Ricci issued from the 
ranks, perfect instruments, Ricci above all, who in 
every respect was a masterpiece of education. If 
anything can be more astonishing than the recital of 
the intelligent and minutely suitable preparation, it 
is the admirably correct, bold, and precise use that 
was made of these gymnastics in the epic struggle 
begun by Ricci, and continued by his successors. 

Xavier, the image or the reflection of Christ, had 
his hands full of prodigies ; he was the genius of 
enthusiastic piety; he commanded men and things 
from the heights of his love; what he might have 
done in China if God had permitted him to land 
there, sanctified by his long victory in India and in 
Japan, cannot be known, but Xavier was dead. It 
was necessary to replace the divine talisman which 
he had had from heaven by human prudence, aided, 
of course, by grace from above, without which all 
labor is in vain: 

For that reason, though less supernatural than 
Xavier, Ricci excites a more lively interest, through 
the episodes of his Christian odyssey. He is a man ; 
he contends with the Chinese empire, that gigantic 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 153 



trifle, a creation of all the world's chimeras ; if we 
may say so, he is at once apostle and adventurer, St. 
Paul and Robinson Crusoe, sublime, industrious, 
keen, bold, artful, playing with the eclipse like 
Christopher Columbus, slighting no detail, using the 
high road, while noticing the diverging paths, fear- 
less in prosecuting his way, but turning back without 
delay, if needful, to try another route. 

He knows everything : all that is known to the 
Chinese, to insinuate himself; all that the Chinese 
do not know, to make himself master. He is a 
doubly keen Jesuit, having his own clear perception 
and his master's ready wit. He has a parry for 
every thrust. He knows the tongue of the literati 
better than the literati themselves, and as to the 
philosophy of the screen, he is equal to Confu- 
cius ! 

He has the mandarin's geography at the end of 
his fingers, he is familiar with their earth as square 
as a tile asleep in space under the protection of the 
emperor, the son of heaven; he knows what grat- 
itude this earth owes to the celestial Van Lie, the 
same emperor who, from the innermost of his palace, 
obligingly sustains it, and by his goodness of soul, 
prevents it from being lost in the abyss, but he 
knows still better the real earth which Europe has 
14 



154 JESUITS! 



journeying through space, and the sun, and the 
planets, and the whole worldly system known at 
Paris, which is very plausible, and perhaps true. 

At his choice — and this is important — he can revel 
in the outlandish sense of the literati, or suddenly 
astonish them with unexpected revelations. As far 
as the unexpected goes, he has brought treasures 
with him. If he wished, instead of announcing 
Christ, he himself would pass for a God, merely 
by using the first book of Euclid, adapted for the 
bonzes. 

After much time consumed in getting across the 
threshold of the empire, he is at last naturalized. 
He writes to consult Father Valignani, then at 
Macao, as to the choice of an official dress ; he is 
that far ! Considering the country, it is a question 
of the first importance, and his former master replies 
to put on the long gown and mitre of the Chinese 
literati. 

The choice is good : Ricci adopts it and thus, 
after many strange and heroic adventures, arrives 
at Nankin where he marks the future position of a 
house of the Company, then at Pekin itself, and one 
day he is admitted to visit (supreme honor!) cer- 
tainly not Van Lie himself, who could not of 
course for a minute abandon the square earth for 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 155 



fear of its destruction, but Van Lie's empty throne, 
which amounts to the same thing, and gives him an 
influence equal to that held by mandarins of the 
highest grade. 

Do not suppose that he lingers too long on so 
fortunate a road ! Without being at all responsible 
for it, a rumor gets about that the " Son of Heaven " 
admits him during the night to private interviews, 
where together they discuss the weightiest matters, 
among others the shape of a new helmet which is to 
put the Tartars to flight without a battle. This 
rumor, starting among the people, gets to the court ; 
as no control is possible over an invisible and dumb 
emperor, the incredible fact happens that, the Great 
Minister of the Empire himself, believing what is 
talked of everywhere, seeks the friendship of the 
pretended favorite and becomes his most obsequious 
servant. 

But where is God in all that? And the word of 
God? What has become of the apostolate in the 
midst of these strange adventures? 

It is unnecessary to say that the apostolate is in all 
this, and nothing but the apostolate. These adven- 
tures are on the flanks of a column where the apos- 
tolate is certainly advancing. 



156 JESUITS! 



It required extraordinary prudence and number- 
less roundabout methods before beginning to preach. 
Here nothing is like elsewhere. Everything is 
understood, played with, discussed, avoided, and yet 
everything is welcome. The point is to live along- 
side of all this and to utilize these materials. The 
subtlety of the Chinese mind is taken by the evident 
grandeur of evangelical morals, but it admits Christ 
only with caution, and then as far as the cross, 
not at all. 

This childlike yet ancient people, this aristocracy, 
half polished, half barbarous, where every mandarin 
is at bottom a clown, does not like the humility of 
the cross. They may admit all the rest ; but not 
this. It is not Chinese. No Chinese would have 
suffered that. A Chinese disembowels himself with- 
out much hesitation, but he would never let himself 
be nailed to a cross. 

And how could the Chinese adore the God of the 
Christians, if he transgressed the received and ven- 
erated decorum ? * 

For a long while this obstacle was absolutely 
insurmountable. Ricci had won in everything else, 
but Chinese obstinacy disputed this ground stead- 
fastly. Great pride may become humble, but not so 
puerile vanity, and the very life of this fantastic 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 157 



people is made up of boasts, competition, tricks, all 
intended to satisfy its childish vainglory ; it subsists 
on gigantic drollery, on microscopic monstrosities 
which astonish logic, disconcert reason, and at every 
step on the road that seemed to be level, opens ridic- 
ulous and terrible abysses. 

However there were already very great results. 
Churches arose ; seminaries were filled before being 
completed. Bonzes carried the Holy Sacrament, and 
converted mandarins were counted by hundreds. 

There were Chinese apostles, true, invincible con- 
fessors, among whom Paul Sin, the admirable orator, 
the great mandarin Li, and many other brilliant 
ones. They were men of that antique stature whose 
virtue and wisdom would have done honor to the 
primitive Church. If we were elsewhere than in 
China, I should say that one of the greatest and 
finest Christianities of the earth was here, but we 
are in China, the home of the nightmare, where one 
is ever liable to a sudden and disagreeable awaken- 
ing. 

The awakening came. And as everything hap- 
pens contrariwise among this people of extravagant 
originality, where even strangers are soon taken 
with the fever of the impossible, the awakening was 
to a persecution that came not from the bonzes, nor 
14* 



158 JESUITS! 



from the governors, nor from the mandarins, nor 
from the emperor, but to a persecution, I say, that 
came — I shall not leave it for you to guess, you 
could not — that came from ecclesiastical authority ! 

The Church, infallible at its summit, has fre- 
quently had incapable servants at various points of 
the ascent. This weakness is lost in the glory of 
the whole, but it has existed, and still exists. 

In the year 1606, which was the eighteenth of the 
skilful and happy apostolate of Matthew Ricci, the 
ecclesiastical authority was represented in those far- 
off parts by the vicar-general of Macao, where there 
was a college of the Jesuits. The rector of this 
college having been chosen arbiter in a dispute be- 
tween the vicar-general and a Franciscan friar, 
decided in favor of the latter. In the excitement 
of his anger, the vicar-general published an inter- 
dict against all the Franciscans and all Jesuits of 
the city and within the city's jurisdiction. 

At the same time, taking advantage of Chinese 
fancies, the Jesuits were denounced to the authorities 
at Canton as building citadels and summoning the 
Portuguese and Japanese fleets to invade the country. 

It needed not so much. Entire provinces arose 
against the Christians! A terrible massacre is re- 
lated, and Father Martinez dies in torture. 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 159 



It was only a violent but passing gust of wind. 
Ricci soon ruled the storm, and a short time after- 
wards established a novitiate-house in the middle of 
Pekin. 

When God called him to Himself four years later, 
the entire population of the capital followed the 
cross that rose above his funeral procession, and 
Father Schall, the successor of that really great 
man, well managed his inheritance. 

Adam Schall, not less illustrious than Ricci, was 
mixed up with all the revolutions of the era just 
opening for China, and which ended in a change of 
dynasty. At his death, the Jesuits had a hundred 
and fifty public churches, and thirty-eight houses or 
colleges in China. 

After the second persecution, which we shall pass 
over in silence, out of respect for an illustrious 
order, another prosperous era began under Fathers 
Verbiest, Gerbillon, Parennin and Gaubil ; and 
these long years, filled with the scientific and lite- 
rary labors of the Chinese apostolate, became the 
glory of the Church and the admiration of the 
learned of Europe. 



160 JESUITS! 



It must not be supposed that the Jesuits' great 
efforts in China had led them to abandon India. 
They had at one time Mogul, Ceylon, Bengal and 
Coromandel. At the end of the XVIth century 
their seminary at Goa sends out its young confessors 
beyond the Ganges, and even as far as the Indus. 

Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Popes and of 
Emperors, becomes the apostle of the Brahmins, 
while others evangelize the Pariahs. The most 
illustrious of them, the blessed John de Britto, 
who was a son of the viceroy, reddens Madoora 
with his blood. Bengal, Thibet, Tartary, Syria, 
Persia and Armenia, see the cross planted and 
hear the gospel preached by Jesuits. With them 
the faith penetrates the deserts of Africa, the em- 
pires of Abyssinia and Morocco, along the coasts 
of Caffraria, the Mozambique and Guinea. 

But they especially desire to bring the New 
World under the beneficent yoke of Christian civili- 
zation. There they have to encounter, not the fero- 
city of the savages only ; their most envenomed 
enemies are Calvinistic, English and Dutch corsairs ; 
alas ! and Frenchmen, too, not less cruel than the 
redskins, massacre every Jesuit who falls into their 
hands. The order is given. Calvin himself has 
been careful to point out the Company of Jesus as 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 161 



the principal and mortal enemy. He does not say : 
" Kill this one or that one," but he says : " There is 
the obstacle, remove it !" 

And he was faithfully obeyed ! Thus, on the 
15th of July, 1570, the blessed Ignatius d'Azevedo 
and his thirty-nine companions, destined for the 
mission of Brazil, perished in sight of Palma. 
Thirty others, a few days afterwards, shared their 
fate. 

The Company of Jesus owed seventy-one martyrs 
to heretic rage. It was the pirates' crusade. Sou- 
rie, Capdeville and others enriched themselves with 
one hand as they skimmed the sea, while with the 
other they won the Calvinistic heaven by murdering 
missionaries wherever they met them. 

But not all the missionaries fall beneath the blows 
of pirates who were dissatisfied with Roman morals. 
Those who escaped their cutlasses and the Indians' 
poisoned arrows, dashed across the deserts in another 
crusade. There were some left for the holy war, 
and it was these who conquered Canada for the 
Catholic faith and for France ; these heroes of 
religion and of patriotism who died for God and for 
France, in heaven enjoy the glory of being forgotten 
by that land, and, therefore, I shall, at least write 
the names of Jogues, Baniel, Brebeuf, the noble 
auxiliaries of Champlain 



162 JESUITS! 



Who has not heard of the Catholic governments 
of Paraguay, those famous " Reductions " lauded by 
Robertson, Albert de Haller, Buffon, Montesquieu, 
Raynal and Chateaubriand, of which Voltaire said : 
" The establishment in Paraguay by unassisted 
Spanish Jesuits, seems like the triumph of hu- 
manity." We shall have to speak again, unfor- 
tunately, of Paraguay and of the cruel reward 
meted out to the Jesuits by Voltaire's contempora- 
ries. 

At Carthagena, in South America, the Jesuits 
performed other wonders of charity. Just as they 
had become Pariahs in India to convert the Pariahs, 
and Brahmins to convert Brahmins, the blessed 
Peter Claver became a negro, and more than a 
negro, the " slave of the negroes," in order to raise 
these miserable victims of European avarice to the 
sentiment of religion. 

One must read his history to understand the dis- 
tance between philanthropy and charity. The phi- 
lanthropists of free America have liberated the 
blacks, and they have done well. But where is the 
American that would take the hand of a negro? 
In New York men and women object to the admit- 
tance of negroes into public conveyances as if they 
were unclean animals, whose presence would poison 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 163 



the atmosphere. The liberty that has been given 
them does not remove their degradation any more 
than have done the tiresome romances that sought to 
win them the pity of Europe. 

Claver has not the right to emancipate them, but 
he awaits them in the places where they are brought 
like cattle to be sold. Ill and poor as he is, and 
dying of fatigue, he loads himself down with pro- 
visions he has begged, and he nurses them, washes 
their faces and their feet, and kisses their tears, 
exclaiming : " O my brothers ! O my friends ! O my 
dear masters ! what do you wish me to do ? Do 
not fear to ask anything of your servant, even his 
life, for I belong to you ; you have bought me in 
Jesus Christ: I am Peter Claver, the slave of the 
negroes for ever !" 

Then there is Father de Rhodes at Tong-King, 
Father Cabral in Thibet and in N6paul, Fathers 
Medrano and Figueroa in New Grenada, John de 
Arcos at Caraccas. 

It was there that the Jesuits were accused for the 
first time of "commerce," because they furnished 
their neophytes, at a slight advance, with merchan- 
dise which the real traffickers would have sold at 
usurious rates. That was a crime which will never 
be pardoned them. It is a dangerous thing to come 



164 JESUITS! 



between the trader and his prey. Neither evidence 
nor time can assuage the rancor of those who have 
been injured by having their exaggerated profits cut 
down, and you will still find people to tell you that 
the Jesuits maintain immense but invisible fleets 
which traverse the ocean with devouring speed, bear- 
ing unknown tributes from absolutely mysterious 
correspondents. 

When a Jesuit engages in trade — and there is one 
unlucky and too celebrated example — the Order 
puts him under interdict, cashiers him, expels him, 
and ruins itself to pay a debt it has not contracted. 

Nevertheless, the Order must suffer for it. 

We shall relate the orgy of iniquity known in 
history as the trial of Father de la Valette. 

The Jesuits do not trade. They give, but do not 
sell. They have neither warehouses nor fleets. They 
let people act and talk. 

In their own books you will find no testimony to 
their zeal, their courage and their stubborn charity. 
They rarely deny even the most dangerous accusa- 
tions, and it is to their enemies we must go for refu- 
tation of the absurd calumnies against them. " It is 
a remarkable thing that those authors who have the 
most severely blamed the licentious manners of the 
regular Spanish monks, all agree in honoring the 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 165 



conduct of the Jesuits. Governed by a more per- 
fect discipline than prevailed among other orders, or 
restrained by the need of preserving the Society's 
honor, so dear to each of its members, the Jesuits, 
whether of Mexico or of Peru, have ever main- 
tained an irreproachable regularity of manners." 
It is not a Jesuit nor even a Catholic who says 
that* 

That, the thought of a Protestant, an honorable 
man and intelligent writer, is very different from 
the vile inventions that appear in our journals and 
our books! 

Before Choiseul's ministry, when the suppression 
of the Jesuits, which Montalembert, after Montyon, 
has called " the greatest iniquity of modern times/' 
was consummated, the following was the general 
state of the missions founded by St. Ignatius' dis- 
ciples among the infidels in various countries of the 
world : the Portuguese Jesuits, who in the 72 years, 
from 1551 to 1623, had sent 662 missionaries to the 
Indies, and 222 to Brazil, or at the rate of 12 a year, 
in 1616 numbered 280 in the province of Goa, and 
180 in that of Brazil; this latter afterwards (1759) 
had 445. 



* Robertson, Hist, of America, tome X, p. 27. 
15 



166 JESUITS! 



The mission of Japan in 1581 counted 150,000 
Christians, 200 churches, 59 missionaries. In China, 
about 1680, the one province of Nankin contained 
more than 100,000 Christians. In the Indies, in 
Madura, Father Laynez baptized (1699) 15,000 
idolators in six months. 

In 1763, America had 526 Jesuits in Peru; 572 
in Mexico; 195 in the New Kingdom (Carthagena 
la nuova); 209 at Quito; 269 (564 in 1767) in Par- 
aguay ; 242 in Chili. At Marafion, in 1667, Father 
Vieyra da Silva organized 50 Christian villages along 
more than 400 leagues of coast. 

The missions of the Levant, founded by Henry 
IV, and revived by Louis XIV, propagated French 
influence along with the Catholic faith in Greece, at 
Constantinople, in Persia, at Smyrna, throughout 
the Archipelago, in Armenia, Crimea, Chaldea, Syria 
and Egypt. 

That was the prosperous and ever growing situa- 
tion of the Company's missions at the time when 
cautious and violent tyranny, on the faith of the 
Pombals, of the Arandas, and of the Choiseuls, in 
one moment destroyed those foundations which had 
cost so much industry and so many years, extending 
over the world and worthy of the name of an empire! 
The mind is astounded that men so petty, so disas- 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 167 



trously powerless to produce or to preserve anything, 
should yet have been able to annihilate so gigantic 
an institution ! 

We shall say nothing here of the Portuguese, the 
Spaniard, or the Frenchman, because in a little while 
they will come under our special study. And they 
are worth the trouble, not for what they have pro- 
duced, because their work is null, but for the immense 
moral and material wealth, destroyed by the blindness 
of their hatred. 



While some of the Jesuits diffused Catholicity 
among pagan and barbarous nations, others strug- 
gled to bring back to obedience the European here- 
tics and schismatics, in revolt against the Church. 
We have seen Lefevre, Le Jay, and Bobadilla, three 
of the original Jesuits, the first to confront the in- 
numerable army of apostates and rebels who filled 
Germany with murder and sacrilege. They are 
soon followed into the arena by the blessed Peter 
Canisius,* one of the noblest figures of the Order, 

*Born at Nimeguen, May 8th, 1521, died at Freiburg, in 
Switzerland, December 21st, 1597, beatified, by Pius IX, 
August 2d, 1864. 



168 JESUITS! 



a man of attractive eloquence, profound science, and 
of inexhaustible resource in polemics. The Luth- 
erans themselves said of him: "There is no way of 
resisting the truth which this man announces ! n 

But above all things he abounded in charity. 
Every day Canisius and Salmeron, both Professors 
in the University of Ingolstadt, leave their chairs 
to take care of the sick in the hospital, or to 
instruct little children in school or even in the 
public square. 

Their natural reward was persecution. Canisius 
wrote to Father Laynez, who had become General of 
the Company of Jesus after Loyola's death : " Our 
enemies are striving by calumny to take away a rep- 
utation which I do not intend to defend. They are 
doing the same honor to all the other Fathers. Soon 
perhaps they will pass from threats to blows and to 
the most cruel treatment. May heaven grant that 
the more they try to injure us, the more we may 
repay them with charity. They are our persecutors, 
but they are our brothers. We must love them on 
account of the love of Jesus Christ, who gave His 
blood for them, and because they sin, perhaps, 
through ignorance." 

I cannot help remarking here, that these beautiful 
thoughts and the discreet manner of expressing them 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 169 



constitute what is called par excellence " Jesuitism," 
that is to say, apparent hypocrisy. 

Jesuitism is merely charity, insulted by those who 
live so far away from it as never to have seen or 
heard it. 

However, intellects were convinced, and above all 
many hearts were touched. " The Jesuits," says 
another Protestant writer, Doctor Leopold Ranke,* 
speaking of their labors in Germany, " lacked neither 
zeal nor prudence. You see them spreading out 
successively into all the places that surround them, 
drawing the masses. Their churches are the most 
frequented. Is a Lutheran found anywhere, well 
versed in the Bible, whose teaching has influence in 
his neighborhood, they employ every means to con- 
vert him, and they nearly always succeed, so habit- 
uated are they to controversy ! . . . . The electoral 
prince of Mayence, Schweichardt, Maximilian of 
Bavaria, the archduke Ferdinand, all of them emi- 
nent men, were pupils of the Jesuits' school, so 
skilful in provoking vast and lofty thoughts in the 
minds of their disciples. These princes were them- 
selves reformers, and they had accomplished through 
their faith the restoration of religion." 

* Vol. IV, p. 49 (French edition.) 

15* 



170 JESUITS! 



Do you wish to see, now, what part those who are 
so readily called " obscurantists " played in the his- 
tory of superstition ? Here is an extract from the 
biography of Father Frederick von Sp6e,* one of 
the most renowned writers of his time. Indignant 
at the frequent abuses which then followed the crimi- 
nal prosecution of sorcerers, he courageously under- 
took the defense of the victims against blinded 
judges and a fanatical public. The impression pro- 
duced in France and Germany by the publication of 
his book, Causa Criminalis, was such that despite 
popular credulity and the error of the courts, the 
absurd and bloody legislation that for centuries had 
governed Europe fell at once into disuse. 

Shortly after (1635), Father von Spge was at 
Treves when the Imperialists captured that city, 
occupied by the French. The Jesuit by his zeal 
and courage saved that great city from pillage and 
snatched the conquered from death. To him four 
hundred Frenchmen owed liberty, provisions, cloth- 
ing and permission to return to their fatherland. 
But contagion came after the war, and Father von 
Spee did not follow those who withdrew; he re- 
mained to take care of the sick, and, at forty years 

*Born at Kaiser woerth, near Dusseldorf, in 1591. 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 171 



years of age, he died standing, in the field of honor 
of charity. 

In the reign of Henry VIII, Salraeron and Pas- 
chase Brouet travelled through England and Ireland 
to strengthen and console the Catholics who were 
subjected to an odious prosecution. But it was need- 
ful to oppose a lasting help against the permanent 
danger. During Elizabeth's bloody reign, whose 
edicts recall those of Nero and of Diocletian,* a 
mission of twelve Jesuits was organized under the 
orders of Edmund Campion and of Robert Parsons, 
both formerly Oxford men. Their heads were at 
stake, and they knew it. " We have so much to do 
here," wrote Father Parsons, " that we often have 
only two hours to take a little repose." 

And the illustrious Doctor Allen asserted that in 
the space of one year (1581) the Fathers had gained 
more souls in England than they could have gained 
elsewhere in their whole life. "It is estimated," 
added he, " that there are ten thousand more Catho- 
lics than last year." 



* Example: From the 15th of July to the 31st of August, 
15S0. fifty thousand Catholics were arrested, indicted, punished 
with confiscation, transportation, and a great number with 
death. 



172 JESUITS! 



But blood is needed to fertilize the labors of apos- 
tles. Edmund Campion spilled his. After him sev- 
eral of his brethren won the palm of martyrdom : 
John Cornelius, Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole,* 
Thomas Bosgrove, Roger Filcock, Francis Page, 
Henry and Thomas Garnett, Thomas Holland, Ru- 
dolph Corby, Henry Morse, Richard Bradley, Cans- 
field, Cuthbert Prescott, Edmund Nevil. . . . The 
martyrs were hung to the gibbet, then cut down 
living, to be quartered, after having their bowels torn 
out. Ibant gaudentesrf as one of the companions of 
Peter Olivaint was to say three hundred years later, 
in 1870, when on his way to execution. Their can- 
ticle is silent only when their heart ceases to beat. 

Voltaire said of their executioners : " The ab- 
surdity of these fanatics was joined to madness ; they 
were at once the most foolish and the most dangerous 
of men." It is with real joy that we cite that great 
mind to whom God had given all things, except the 
priceless gift of faith. He made many false accusa- 
tions against the Company of Jesus, but many, too, 
are the pages where his pen does them justice. 



* He had three brothers and a cousin in the Company of 
Jesus. 

f " They went rejoicing." 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 173 



The cruelty of the fools who slew was overcome 
by the patience of the wise who knew how to die, 
and after that long and frightful persecution, thanks 
to the labors of the apostles and the blood of the 
martyrs, the Catholic faith obtained the " freedom of 
the city" in England, and again flourished in the 
"Isle of Saints." 

The proof that Protestantism, so completely vic- 
torious at first, was losing ground, is in the fact that 
the countries of the north of Europe all hesitated at 
the same time. The " plague of the Jesuits," as the 
preachers called it, attacked those kingdoms where 
Christian had put a mitre on his footman. Father 
Anthony Possevin * preached in the place where 
Gustavus Vasa had broken the images of Mary, and 
the people came at the sound of his voice; kings 
also. He penetrated to Stockholm, received the 
private abjuration of the king of Sweden, John III, 
and then went to Moscow. There the confessor 
shows himself a diplomat of the first order ; at the 
Kremlin he negotiates peace between the Czar John 
IV and the Poles, and then gladly giving up this 
brilliant rdle, he returns to Padua to resume his 
modest functions of professor and preacher. But we 

* Born at Mantua, in 1534. 



174 JESUITS! 



have no right to wonder at this absolute obedience, 
practiced with the utmost humility ; it is the rule, and, 
in this case, humility was especially productive, for 
from the hands of this master came Francis de Sales. 

Less then fifty years after the death of Possevin, 
two of his brethren, aided by that illustrious pupil 
of the Jesuits, Rene Descartes, converted the daugh- 
ter of Gustavus Adolphus to Catholicity. Doctor 
Ranke, whose impartiality we have already done 
honor to, writes : " The activity of the Jesuits 
reached into all the provinces, among the races of 
Livonia ; in Lithuania, where they were obliged to 
combat the ancient serpent-worship; among the 
Greeks, where often the Jesuits were the only Cath- 
olic priests ; in Poland, where hundreds of religious 
of the Company of Jesus dedicated themselves to the 
revival of Catholic faith." 

Here again, however, their work bore the seal of 
the Cross: Andrew Bobola,* cruelly martyred by 
schismatic Cossacks, became a new patron in heaven 
of Catholic Poland. 



*Born in Poland, in 1590 put to death for the faith at 
Yanov, May 16th, 1657, beatified by Pope Pius IX, October 
30th, 1853. The martyr Olivaint has written a life of this 
martyr. 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 175 



We shall finish this rapid sketch of the missions 
in the two worlds by a few words on the labors of 
the Jesuits in the great Catholic nations of Italy, 
Spain and Portugal, the countries of Germany that 
remained faithful to Rome, and, finally, the Low 
Countries and Austria ; we shall treat of France in 
a special chapter. 

And first, one of the most hostile writers against 
the Company of Jesus, the apostate Huber, of 
Munich, passed a correct judgment on two of those 
nations: "The Order," says he, "in a short time 
gained great advantages over Protestantism ; the 
renovating movement was smothered in Italy, and 
in Germany driven back to the countries of the 
North." In support of this assertion, Huber bor- 
rows Macaulay's testimony : " ' Protestantism/ says 
the noble writer cited, ' was checked in its victorious 
march and driven back with a giddy rapidity from 
the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. 
Before the Order had a century of existence, it had 
filled the whole world with monuments of its mar- 
tyrs and of its great struggles for the faith.' " 

At Rome, at Venice, at Padua, and throughout the 
Italian peninsula, as well as all over that immense 
empire which united Austria, Spain, and Flanders 
under the one sceptre, during two centuries, the 



176 JESUITS! 



Jesuits exposed error, defended the true faith, rees- 
tablished ecclesiastical discipline, encouraged char- 
itable works for the comfort of the sick and the 
poor, opened asylums for suffering, for want, for 
repentance, and for old age, and trained the youth 
to that lovely virtue which we admire in Aloysius 
Gonzaga, and in Stanislas Kostka. 

Altars, too, arose on all sides to honor the saints 
whom the Company of Jesus had filled with its 
spirit; Rome venerates St. Ignatius and St. Francis 
de Borgia; Naples, St. Francis de Hieronimo; Spain, 
the blessed Alfonso Rodriguez; Belgium, the blessed 
John Berchmans; Holland, Catholic Switzerland, 
and the Tyrol, the blessed Peter Canisius; France, 
St. Francis Regis,* etc. 

And how did these men reach the summit of 
Christian perfection? By the exact, the heroic 
observance of the rules of their institute, by the 
practice of obedience as defined by St. Ignatius, by 
constant labors, by fidelity to the spirit of that Com- 
pany of Jesus which has been persecuted, and even, 
for a time, destroyed, but which no one has seriously 
dreamed of reforming, because no one has ever been 



* Born Jan. 31st, 1597, died Dec. 31st, 1716, canonized April 
6th, 1737, by Pope Clement XII. 



A GLANCE AT TEH MISSIONS. 177 



able to call it corrupt, except the "solitaires" of 
Port Royal, whom Voltaire himself has answered, 
and the foolish good people who live by insulting 
the Jesuits in our time, and whom surely no one 
will care to answer. 

There is, however, a certain vulgar truism which 
we must overturn on our way. It is the fashion 
among the makers of the doting dictionaries, which 
go on faithfully copying the same worn-out stupidi- 
ties since the time of the encyclopedic deluge, openly 
to proclaim the decay of those nations w T hich have 
remained faithful to the Church, and to attribute 
this pretended decline to the Jesuits. Among the 
invalids cited are Austria, Spain, Portugal. Yes- 
terday they spoke of Mexico, but they are silent 
since Juarez. 

Why not Italy? And above all, why not Bel- 
gium? 

Are they quite sure that England is securely hood- 
winked? For she begins to perceive heresy at work 
outside of her, and she has not yet made up her 
mind that Protestantism is, after all, a profitable 
commerce to engage in. 

One might say a good many things as to the infe- 
riority of Catholic countries. For my part, I do not 
admit it in any degree, because I do not place human 
16 



178 JESUITS! 



greatness in the winning of a piece of coin, and 
because I have no devotion for the god called Dollar 
or Revolver; but admitting the decline of certain 
Catholic countries, is it at all to be compared with 
the horrible internal malady of certain Protestant 
countries? We need not name those countries, we 
know them well, and who does not? 

And then, were not these Catholic nations Catholic 
at the time of their splendor? Were they not more 
Catholic then than now? Have they not fallen little 
by little, in proportion as they became unfaithful to 
their beliefs, in proportion as they drank the poison 
of indifference, of skepticism, and of incredulity? 
And then, who is so stupid as to believe there is 
Jesuit influence in all that? Are they to be blamed 
for the poisonous atmosphere which they have done 
their best to counteract? 

Besides, the Jesuits were expelled from most of 
those Catholic states by the intrigues of those who 
brought about the feebleness of those states; they 
were driven out at the height of the prosperity, which 
they had largely contributed to produce; their val- 
uable help was replaced in those states by . 

But what is the use of saying by whom ? 

Spain, Portugal, the kingdom of Naples, the 
duchy of Parma, the empire of Austria, are all 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 179 



states that expelled the Jesuits. And was their 
condition bettered? 

And France? 

If she was improved, why complain ? 

But if, on the contrary, those states have regretted 
the departure of the Jesuits, as history affirms, what 
is the sense of blaming the authors of prosperity 
with the misfortunes that ensued after their unjust 
and unwise expulsion ? 

Let every one be responsible for his own acts ! 

If what was pure gold in the Jesuits' hands has 
changed into lead for their despoilers, whose is the 
fault? 



In all that has been said, has the reader discovered 
or not, the motives of the really extraordinary hatred 
that surrounds the Company of Jesus ? 

For myself, I reply YES and NO. Yes, for the 
enemies of the Church ; no, for its friends. 

The enemies of the Church have every reason to 
hate the Jesuits; the friends of the Church have 
every reason to esteem and to love them. And it 



180 JESUITS! 



would not be frank to deny that there is something 
in our words that tends to confuse the servants with 
the master, the Jesuits with the Church. The Com- 
pany of Jesus is nothing in comparison with the 
Church, which alone has the promise of immortality. 

The Company of Jesus could disappear without 
causing the slightest disturbance of the rock on 
which the divine edifice reposes. 

But " all the enemies of the Church are ever, and 
before all, the enemies of the Jesuits." That is what 
emphatically entitles them to the confidence of Cath- 
olics. ". . . . The Company of Jesus has the une- 
qualled glory of being struck, accused, and calum- 
niated by the united enemies of the Church. A 
singular privilege, a glorious prerogative, which 
makes their name the most glorious that it is given 
to Christians to bear in our times." * 



We have just seen them at work outside France. 
Let us now return home and see what they have 



* Count de Montalembert, discourse in the Chamber of Peers, 
May 8th and June 11th, 1844. 



A GLANCE AT THE MISSIONS. 181 



done here; that, in the mouths of the enemies of 
God and of our country, their name has become the 
grossest insult applied not only to every priest, to 
every Catholic, but even to every honorable man, 
honorably serving his country. 

Read the "liberal" journals, enter the liberal 
clubs, and you will see that they apply the name of 
Jesuits indiscriminately to employers, proprietors, 
statesmen of every opinion, to all who know how to 
read, and not to blackguard. The gendarmes are 
Jesuits, the prefects, the marshals, the Brothers of 
Christian Doctrine ! The Protestant ministers them- 
selves are Jesuits ! the magistrates, Jesuits ! the sol- 
diers, Jesuits ! Jesuits ! Jesuits ! Never were men 
celebrated by such a unanimous outcry against them. 
If this is not glory, where is it ? 



16* 



IJST FKANCE. 



It was a solemn hour for our ancestors when the 
lame beggar of the College of Sainte-Barbe climbed 
the hill of Montmartre before daylight. France, 
baptized under Clovis, glorified under Charlemagne, 
beautified under St. Louis, was deeply Christian; 
but she likewise was deeply agitated by the religious 
and already political revolution which was overturn- 
ing Germany, Switzerland and England. Beyond 
our frontiers, desolation was at its height ; within, 
Calvin was sharpening his weapons. Between the 
vow of Montmartre and Paul Ill's bull, Calvin 
published his Christian Institute, and thus founded 
a sect from which was to come the Huguenots,* that 

* 1536. 

183 



184 JESUITS! 



is to say, civil war, and what was a worse calamity, 
religious war, plus quam civilia bella. Sparks were 
already flying through the smoke that rose above 
the hidden fire. A few years later and the con- 
spiracy of Amboise* unmasked the fanatical aspira- 
tions of the self-styled " Reformed." 

In these times of peril, the growing Company's 
place could not be doubtful : it accomplished pre- 
cisely the duty for which its founder had created it; 
it took up the Catholic cause, which at that time was 
the national cause. At the solicitation of Cardinal 
de Lorraine and of several other wise and learned 
prelates, Henry II had, in 1550, decreed letters 
patent to the Company of Jesus. But the open or 
secret enemies of the Catholic faith had too much 
dread of these new comers not to use every power 
and every means to prevent their establishment in 
France. The Huguenots and the politicians worked 
so well that the Parliament, whose hateful opposi- 
tion began with the birth of the Order, refused to 
register the royal letters. 

Two years later, a new edict commanded the 
magistrates to act, but there was new opposition 
favored by the king's death. Francis II three times 

* 1560. 



IN FRANCE. 185 



reiterated his injunctions.* Charles IX returns to 
the charge with no more success,! so great was the 
spirit of rebellion and of dislike for anything frankly 
Catholic, among the higher members of the magis- 
tracy. 

At last, on the 15th of September, 1561, the Col- 
loquy of Poissy to which the Parliament, by one of 
its subterfuges, had referred the case, solemnly re- 
ceived the Jesuits in France, but under restrictive 
clauses, which were later removed by Charles IX in 
1565, and by Henry III in 1580. 

From the very first they had deserved this confi- 
dence by their zeal in preaching and in defending 
the true faith. As a prelude to the long series of 
successes that were to attend the Order's efforts in 
education, Maldonat drew a brilliant audience of 
prelates, nobles and learned men to his lectures in 
the College of Clermont at Paris; the colleges of 
the institute were scarcely opened than they w T ere 
filled with pupils, and " the Protestants themselves 
recalled their children from far-off colleges to entrust 
them to the Jesuits/' says Ranke. At this time 



* Lettres patentee. February 12th, April 25th and October 
9th, 1560. 

f Lettres patentes. March 4th and 18th, 1561. 



186 JESUITS! 



Edmund Auger was struggling with the Calvinists 
of the south. Having fallen into the hands of the 
Baron des Adrets at Valence, he continued to preach 
from the scaffold and his executioners were so moved 
by his eloquence that they spared his life. He was 
no sooner free than he hastened to Lyons, where a 
contagious malady was raging, which had carried off 
sixty thousand people in a short time ; he cares for 
the dying and the poor, revives confidence and saves 
the city, which follows him in a body to the feet of 
Mary. Calvin could not have found a single parti- 
zan in all Lyons on that day ! 

The heretics had nothing but violence and calumny 
to oppose to that zeal and devotion, but they had 
the help of the University of Paris, alarmed at a 
rivalry which it thought dangerous. The antago- 
nism was beginning. The University tried to ex- 
clude the Company of Jesus from the schools, as it 
had done some centuries before with those great 
religious orders which have given the Church such 
men as Thomas of Aquin, Albertus Magnus, Duns 
Scotus. The University's case must have been very 
suspicious, and its struggles against free education 
devoid of all reason, when the Parliament, with all 
of its prejudice, having taken cognizance of the mat- 
ter, twice decided in favor of the Jesuits. 



IN FRANCE. 187 



According to the testimony even of du Boullay 
and of Cre>ier, the historians of the University, its 
course of instruction was then in a feeble condition. 
Studies were almost utterly neglected ; and, what 
was still more disastrous, the looseness of morals 
among the young people of the schools was only 
equalled by the absurdity of their ideas and the 
impiety of their doctrines. 

The colleges of the Jesuits were freely opened to 
all ; and along with a taste for literature, reestablished 
a zeal for faith and for the practice of a Christian 
life ; and we can say of those teachers what Voltaire 
said of Father Poree, they " had the merit of making 
their disciples love literature and virtue." 

But the League was formed. That great move- 
ment, which was legitimate in itself, since its aim was 
to defend the religion of the great mass of Frenchmen 
against a few fanatics, brought many ills and excesses 
in its train. Relying upon history, we can point to 
the conduct of the Company of Jesus as a model of 
prudence in that delicate conjuncture. 

Its members admitted the correctness of the prin- 
ciples of the League, which were simply a resistance 
of the national Catholicity to a Protestant invasion, 
but at the same time it strove to calm the efferves- 
cence of passion and to reconcile interests. Far from 



188 JESUITS! 



meddling in the struggles of political parties, they 
were, from the beginning to the end, the apostles 
and mediators of peace. Outside of Paris their 
action was of slight importance, for the fifty cities 
which adhered to the League contained not one house 
of the Jesuits. In Paris, Father Pigenat displayed 
great devotion, but it was altogether platonic and 
had not even the encouragement of possible success. 
His efforts were lost, as was to be expected amid the 
noise of the tempest, while the fury of the sixteen 
which he had undertaken to control to the best of 
his ability, in spite of him, increased in madness, 
although he did succeed in moderating it more 
than once at the risk of his liberty, and even of 
his life ; but other members of the Society, accept- 
ing a more useful mission, undertook to arrange 
conferences looking to peace with the Sovereign 
Pontiff. 

At the height of the excitement in Paris, a few 
preachers, carried away by their zeal, departed from 
the reserve imposed upon them by their institute; 
but they were soon recalled to* themselves by the 
energetic measures of the general, Claude Aquaviva. 
"Tell the king," he wrote to the provincial of France, 
" how strongly the Constitutions forbid us to take 
part in temporal affairs," 



IN FRANCE. 189 



More than that, he remonstrated very firmly 
with Sixtus V, who was passionately partial to 
the League, on the necessary neutrality of the 
Order. 

But the conversion of Henry IV to Catholicity 
removed the need of the League. Bellarmine, who 
was then at Paris, being questioned as to the lawful- 
ness of a near surrender of the capital to the king, 
replied (against the opinion of the University) that 
it was " lawful to lay aside arms," and that it was 
"a duty to cease a struggle when there was no longer 
an object." At the same time, the Jesuits in Rome 
were laboring to bring about a reconciliation between 
the king of France and the Church. It is a remark- 
able thing that the most active and devoted of these 
benevolent negotiators were an Italian, Father Pos- 
sevin ; a Spaniard, Cardinal Toledo; and two French- 
men, unjustly banished by the Parliament, Fathers 
Commolet and Gu6ret. 

Be"arnais was not ungrateful. " My cousin," 
wrote Henry IV to Cardinal Toledo, " I know 
that after God and our Holy Father, it is to 
the integrity of your conscience that I owe the 
absolution " (that is, the removal of the excommu- 
nication,) " which it has pleased His Holiness to 
decree in my favor." 
17 



190 JESUITS! 



This moderate conduct of the Jesuits, joined to 
great zeal for the integrity of the faith, was not cal- 
culated to disarm the hatred that surrounded them. 
Better things had been expected from them ; the 
Parliament and the University were unanimously 
disappointed. 

Soon the confidence with which the Holy See, the 
episcopate and the Catholic people honored them, 
and the evidences of the favor which King Henry 
IV began to lavish upon them, all united to exas- 
perate the envy of their numerous enemies. The 
same fanatics who had armed Poltrot, the murderer 
of the Duke de Guise, and Clement, the assassin of 
Henry III, thought to involve the Jesuits in the 
punishment of Chastel. 

It was not easy to do this, on account of the evi- 
dence of the facts, the public esteem and the acknowl- 
edged sympathy of the king; but public esteem is 
liable to waver, and the king had a great deal to do. 
Besides, that epoch offers astonishing examples of 
parliamentary intrigue. 

John Chastel had during ten years followed the 
course of the University; he was studying law there 
under Marcellus at the time when he made the at- 
tempt on Henry IY. But, for merly, he had attended 
the College of Clermont for a few months as an 



IN FRANCE. 191 



extern pupil, and this sorry detail served as a point 
of departure for an accusation. But how develop it? 
The Parliament attended to that. Something else 
was needful, to be sure, but as the Parliament was 
not exacting, it was satisfied with the few months' 
externate. "Huguenots and libertines" says the his- 
torian Dupleix, " launched a thousand execrations, 
curses and imprecations against the Jesuits; but 
neither proof nor presumption against them could 
be forced from the assassin's mouth by the agony of 
torture." L'Etoile, an enemy of the Jesuits, Sully 
likewise, as well as de Thou, Mathieu, Cayet, the 
Memoires de la Ligue, and all the chroniclers, unani- 
mously acknowledge that "Chastel exonerated the 
Jesuits, and to his last breath declared them unjustly 
suspected." 

Nevertheless, during those months of the exter- 
nate, the Jesuits might have taught Chastel, in 
addition to the art of assassination, that of silence. 
Besides, why so many roundabout ways ? " If it is 
not thou, it is thy brother," the " Jesuits must have 
been guilty," and the Parliament disgraced itself, for 
the first time, by creating a precedent for the great 
iniquity of the XVIIIth century. 

The Parliament condemned in spite of every ap- 
pearance and in spite of common sense. That great 



192 JESUITS! 



body, so often worthy of the respect of history, 
listening only to its blind passion, did not hesitate 
at the most hateful of crimes, judicial assassina- 
tion ! 

An inoffensive old man, who, it is likely, had 
never seen Chastel, Father Guignard, was living 
buried in his books in the library of the college. 
He was arrested, condemned and hanged in the 
Place de Greve, and the only crime he was guilty 
of, says L'Etoile, was, " having been born at an 
unlucky hour !" 

But what was the excuse for this summary judg- 
ment and cruel sentence ? 

" Because," replies Hurault de Chiverny, chancel- 
lor of France, in his Memoires d'Etat, " the enemies 
of the Jesuits found, or perhaps supposed that there 
were certain private writings concerning the death 
of the late King Henry III in Guignard's room." 
Now, "the judges who condemned him," adds 
L'Etoile, " were mostly those who had assisted at the 
decree of judgment pronounced against the late king in 
the year 1589" (that was five years before), "which 
is a strange thing." 

Strange indeed, and almost incredible, if we were 
speaking of anything else but the condemnation of 
a Jesuit. 



IN FRANCE. 193 



We have preferred to quote writers and chroniclers 
inimical to the Jesuits, and this was natural ; not 
one honorable writer has failed to condemn this act 
of repulsive iniquity, but it is curious to study these 
facts in the books of modern " liberalism." I have 
a work of the kind, called popular, under my eyes, 
one that enjoys an enviable notoriety with certain 
people; it is the Histoire de Paris, by Dulaure, and 
it excites my wonder. This Dulaure is not really 
a bad man ; he would have been better pleased if 
they had not hanged Father Guignard, and above all 
if they had not burned his body and scattered his 
ashes to the wind, which he thinks unnecessary ; he 
has a trifle of pity for those poor ashes, while he 
insults the man and mildly chides the Parliament. 

But he heartily and openly detests the Jesuits! 
Considering the chaplet of unblushing calumnies he 
weaves against the Jesuits in regard to this hideous 
murder of a Jesuit, it seems as though his greatest 
grievance with the Parliament was that it had left 
so many Jesuits alive. 

His paragraph referring to the decree condemning 
all Jesuits as corrupters of youth, as disturbers of 
the public peace, etc., to leave Paris within three 
days, is full of joy, and he gives a good many pages 
to the description of the grotesque column, "a monu- 
17* 



194 JESUITS! 



ment to commemorate the disgrace of the Jesuits." 
This column would rather have perpetuated the 
infamy of the Parliament had not Henry IV, out of 
consideration for his amiable presidents and counsel- 
lors, thrown it down and swept it away.* At the 
same time that the excellent Dulaure good-naturedly 
scolds the judicial assassins of Father Guignard, 
who, after all, was only one Jesuit, he approves of 
the exile of five hundred Jesuits, who, perhaps, have 
not poniarded Henry IV, but who undoubtedly 
would poniard him, as they poniarded Henry III ! 

For Ravaillac was a Jesuit, as Jacques Clement 
was a Jesuit, as all the assassins of kings, from 
Brutus to Damiens, have been Jesuits. All this is 
hummed in a sleepy tone to a false air, badly 
imitated from Beranger. 

The blockhead Dulaure lived just before the time 
of "enlightened" liberalism; in his day there was 
only the liberalism of mud. Every well brought-up 
bourgeois peacefully helped himself to his meal of 
Jesuit as was proper, and after finishing Father 



* This recalls the monument erected in London in memory 
of the great fire in 1666, and the inscription on which charged 
thnt dreadful calamity upon the •' Papists." This monument 
was allowed to remain until the intelligence of our own times 
spurned the slander and ordered its removal. — (Transkitor.) 



IN FRANCE. 195 



Guignard, would add, with the malicious smile of 
the Voltaires of Yvetot : " If Henry IV had not 
petted the Jesuits, there were ten thousand who 
would have stabbed him by turns. It's a well- 
known fact!" 

Ah ! to be sure ; hurrah for light ! Of course I 
have no desire to deprive people of so much 
" enlightenment " of their Dulaures ! 



Pulaure tells the truth ; not satisfied with having 
shed the blood of an innocent priest, the Parliament 
expelled the Jesuits from Paris, "not without the 
astonishment of many and the regret of several,"* 
and these upright magistrates loyally appropriated 
the spoils of the banished. The Jesuits' library, a 
large and very fine one, was given up to pillage. 
At the request of messieurs the king's-people, the 
books were deemed lawful prize, and these gentle- 
men helped themselves the first.f 

" This insult to justice, committed by her repre- 
sentatives, was not only/' says the Protestant Sis- 
mondi, "a scandalous iniquity, it was an act of 
political cowardice?' 

*Chiverriy, Memoires d 'Etat, p. 241. f L'Etoile. 



196 JESUITS! 



Even with the eloquence of such as Dulaure, it is 
hard to make people think Henry IV a timid man ; 
but everyone knows that he had too great a soul 
to connive in the least at such like infamy.* As 
far as he could, he made amends for this crying 
injustice, and without delay he recalled the Jesuits 
with pomp, in spite of the parliament's opposi- 
tion. 

In September, 1603, the king signed an edict at 
Rouen, which reestablished the Company of Jesus 
within the jurisdictions of several parliaments. And 
as the members of that of Paris with their president, 
Achille de Harlay, at the head, thought fit to pre- 
sent the king with "very humble remonstrances" 
on this subject, the king replied in these manly and 
lively words which certainly did not indicate the 
poltroon : 

" I am well pleased," said he to the magistrates, 
" with the care you have of my person and of my 
State, I have all your thoughts in my mind, but you 



*In 1762 there was invented for the temporary need an 
Edict of Henry IV of January 7th, 1595, which was again 
invoked in the Chamber of Deputies and at the Court. Proofs 
abound that this pretended edict never existed. (Among 
others see Documents concernant la Convpagnie de Jesus, 1827, 
tome l er .) 



IN FRANCE. 197 



have not all mine in yours. . . . You pretend to be 
versed in matters of State, and you understand no 
better than I do how to draw up a process. Touch- 
ing the Colloquy of Poissy, I wish you to know 
that if all had done as well there as one or two 
Jesuits, who were there very conveniently, things 
would have gone better for the Catholics. At that 
time not their ambition but their capacity was recog- 
nized, and I marvel how you found your opinion of 
the ambition of men who refuse dignities and pre- 
lacies when offerred to them, who make a vow to 
God never to accept them, and who seek nothing 
else in this world but to serve without reward all 
who desire service from them. But if this word 
Jesuit displeases you, why do you not turn upon 
those who call themselves monks of the Trinity? . . . 
For myself I should rather be called Jesuit than 
Jacobin or Augustinian. 

"If, up to the present, they have only been in 
France by tolerance, God has reserved for me the 
glory, which I hold as a great grace, to establish 
them here ; and if they were here only provisionally, 
from this out they shall be here both by edict 
and by royal order; the will of my predecessors 
retained them ; my will is to establish them here. 
The University has notably opposed them ; but that 



198 JESUITS! 



was either because they did better than others,* as 
witness the concourse of scholars in their colleges, 
or because they were not incorporated in the Uni- 
versity. . . . You say that in your parliament the 
most learned did not study with them ; if the most 
learned are the oldest, it is true, for they had studied 
before the Jesuits were known in France; but I have 
heard say that other parliaments do not speak in this 
way, nor even all yours ; and if they do not learn 
better there than elsewhere, whence comes it, that 
your University is become like a desert, and that in 
spite of your decrees they are sought at Douay, at 
Pont (a Mousson) and beyond the realm, f 

"You call them a company of factious people 
because they were of the League, but that was the 
evil of the time. They thought they were doing 
right, and they were deceived like a good many 
others ; % but I choose to believe they had less 
malice than others, || and hold that the same con- 
science along with the graces I shall accord them, 



*Alas! there is the eternal trouble! What a sharp jour- 
nalist this king would have made! 

f Thus it was, too, at the beginning of this century. "When 
the Jesuits go away, their disciples follow them. 

% We ought not to ask Henry IVs approbation of the League. 

j| Especially Messieurs of the Parliament. 



IN FRANCE. 



will make them adhere to me as much as and better 
than they did to the League. You say they attract 
children of good intelligence and choose the best of 
them ; do we not choose the best soldiers for war ? 
And if you were free from favoritism would you 
receive any one who was not worthy of your com- 
pany and to serve in your parliament? If they 
furnished you with ignorant teachers or preachers 
you would despise them ; they are men of mind and 
you turn upon them for it ! As for the riches which 
you say they possess, that is a calumny; in all France 
they had but twelve or fifteen thousand crowns rev- 
enue altogether. . . . The vow which they make to 
the Pope is of no consequence to us. They only 
make this vow to obey the Popes when they are 
sent to convert the infidels ; and in fact it is through 
them that God has converted the Indies. You say 
they enter France in whatever way they can ; others 
do likewise, and I myself entered my kingdom in the 
best fashion I could ; their great patience must be 
admitted, and. as for myself I admire it, for they 
obtain all things by patience and a good life. And 
I esteem them none the less in that you say they are 
close observers of their institute ; that is what will 
maintain them. . . . Touching their opinion of the 
Pope, I know they respect him highly ; so also do I. 



200 JESUITS! 



As to the doctrine of freeing ecclesiastics from my 
authority and teaching to slay kings, it must be seen 
what they say and whether they thus instruct youth. 
One thing makes me think there is nothing in it: 
during the thirty years that they have taught youth 
in France, a hundred thousand scholars who have 
lived amongst them and like them have gone out of 
their colleges ; let only one of this great number be 
found who will maintain that he has heard such 
language or anything approaching what is charged 
against them ! 

"Touching Barriere,* though it needs must be 
that a Jesuit was his confessor as you say, yet it was 
a Jesuit who informed me of his enterprise, and 
another one told him he would be damned for dar- 
ing to undertake it. As for Chaste], the torture 
could not wring an accusation from him as to a 
a meeting with Varade or any other Jesuit what- 
ever; and if it was otherwise, why did you spare 
them ? For the one who was executed was con- 
demned for another matter, which, it was said, was 
found among his writings. But even if thus it were 
that a Jesuit aimed the blow, must all the apostles 
suffer for Judas, or am I to answer for all the thiev- 

* The fir3t assassin of the king. 



IN FRANCE. 201 



ing, and every other fault, which those who have 
been my soldiers may commit in the future? If a 
Spanish Jesuit and Cardinal (Father Toledo) helped 
me to get the blessing of the Holy Father when I 
became a Catholic, why do you wish to cast umbrage 
on Frenchmen, who are my natural subjects? I 
know what I shall judge concerning them, and I 
shall let you know what I desire; leave me the 
management and the conduct of this Company; I 
have managed and governed more difficult and trou- 
blesome ones ; obey my will only." 

We have reproduced in their entirety these words 
of a king so often assassinated by the Jesuits, not so 
much for the purpose of defending the Jesuits, long 
ago absolved, as of doing homage, as a literary man, 
to the august writer who spoke so neat, pure and 
robust a French more than half a century before 
Bossuet, Pascal and Labruyere. 

Never did any one more frankly snatch away the 
cowardly mask of calumny. It is a speech in the 
finest style and full of heart. 

It was necessary to obey, and the edict of Rouen, 
in spite of manifest ill-will, was registered by the 
Parliament on the 4th of January, 1604. 

Henry IV did not stop there. In a thousand 
ways he testified his esteem, gratitude and affection 
,18 



202 JESUITS! 



for the members of the Company of Jesus, and it is 
difficult to believe that the fear which he had of 
them could carry him so far as to establish them " in 
his own house of la Fleche," so far as to give his 
whole confidence to the famous and learned Father 
Coton, and finally, that he would go so far beyond 
the possible bounds of cowardice as to devise them 
his heart as a last proof of that tenderness which 
had made him say : " I have loved you since I have 
known you." 



Louis XIII, following the same path as his father, 
took all their Company " into his protection and 
safe-keeping, as it pleased the late king to do."* 
he confirmed the right of teaching accorded to the 
Jesuits by Henry IV, and he recommended them to 
the Protestant princes of Europe " as men of deep 
piety and of great prudence." In 1627, along 
with Richelieu, he laid the corner-stone of their 



* Etats-Generaux de 1614. Yceu presente au roi par les deux 
premiers ordres du royaume. 



IN FRANCE, 203 



church in the Faubourg (Saint- Antoine ;* finally, 
royal protection and popular favor so well defended 
them against the miserable jealousy and hatred of 
their rivals that, in this year, the number of their 
pupils was thirteen thousand one hundred and 
ninety-five in the one province of Paris. What do 
you think of those " dark ages " when the desire of 
learning was so wide-spread? 

And what do you think of these friends of igno- 
rance, these obscurantists, keeping at the head of 
education and beating the champions of the Refor- 
mation in every encounter, whether religious, moral, 
or philosophical? Where are the torches to outshine 
the light of the Bellarmines and the Toledos? Was 
there at that time an orator more convincing than 
Canisius ? A theologian surer than Molina, who 
was so basely misrepresented? Molina proved man's 
freedom under the almighty power of God. It was 
natural that his generous doctrine should meet the 
dislike of those false rigorists who find pleasure in 
making God's service insupportable. Judas has 
various ways of betraying his master. 



* Founded according to St. Ignatius' promise, in the very 
place where the first sacrilegious attack was made against the 
Blessed Virgin's images. 



204 JESUITS! 



And can greater doctrine be cited than that of 
Suarez, of whom Bossuet said, " in him one hears 
the whole School"? I do not intend to give an 
account here of the services rendered to intelligence 
by the institute of the Jesuits ; it would take up too 
much room, but we cannot pass in silence that gigan- 
tic work of the triple Benedictine, John Bolland, 
the Acta Sanctorum, popularly known as "The Bol- 
landists," and which Leibnitz called the Chris- 
tian encyclopaedia. Labbe and Sirmond flourished 
then, and Petau was the oracle of learned Europe. 
Aquaviva governed the Order. D'Alembert later 
made such a panegyric of that general that one 
might suppose he held him above Ignatius himself. 
The Company had five hundred and fifty houses, 
and was divided into thirty-three provinces con- 
taining more than twelve thousand religious. 

The researches of Fr. Eckel made an enormous 
step in numismatics; the members of the Company 
composed grammars and lexicons of nearly a hun- 
dred languages and idioms, among them Basque, 
Bas-Breton, Hungarian, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, 
Chinese, and most of the savage idioms. Father 
Lanzi discovered the Etruscan language ; two other 
Jesuits, John Pons and Ernest Hanxleden, made 
known the mysteries of the Sanscrit and the Telenga 



IN FRANCE. 205 



to the learned world. Father Bouvet brought to 
France the 49 Chinese volumes which were the 
origin of the collection in Bibliotheque Nationale. 
Finally Kircher, the universal, preceded our Cham- 
pollion by a long while in the study of Egyptian 
hieroglyphics. 

As to Jesuit astronomers, mathematicians, geom- 
eters, mineralogists, naturalists, geographers, in- 
ventors, they are simply innumerable. On this 
subject one might consult Montuela's Histoire des 
Mathematiques, Lalande's Bibliographic Astrono- 
mique, Cr^tineau-Joly's History of the Society of 
Jesus. Only by way of curiosity I shall cite among 
the inventors, victims of the Sic vos non vobis, Father 
Francis Lana-Terzi, born in 1631, who discovered 
aerostation, and another Jesuit, a Portuguese mis- 
sionary to Brazil, Bartholomew Gusmao, who a 
century later made the first public experiment of a 
fire-balloon, before Montgolfier's time. The same 
Lana invented the planting-machine of which Tall, 
in 1733, gave himself out as the inventor. 

Even the camelia, that worldly flower, and quinine, 
that illustrious drug, came to us through the Jesuits, 
as well as the opulent, the chestnut-tree. 

But these little things did not interfere with the 
greater. When the attempt was made in France and 
18* 



206 JESUITS! 



especially in England to erect royal absolutism into 
a dogma, the Jesuits, with Bellarmine and Suarez at 
their head, defended the right of the people, showing 
once more that the great law of obedience established 
by Ignatius in nowise excluded the notion of liberty. 
Be very sure that Pascal, whom we are approaching, 
will never attack those men ; he will keep his hands 
off Suarez, Canisius, Possevin, Petau, Toledo, Bel- 
larmine, in reality he will touch no one, for the 
ridiculous and unwholesome manakin of a Jesuit, 
which he has fabricated with his own hands in order 
to attack it, is no one. 

In going through the record of the Jesuits of the 
XVIIth century, if the dates succeed in making us 
dodge the name of Bourdaloue, the immortal honor 
of the French pulpit, at least we must not pass the 
name of St. Francis Regis, the dazzling apostle of 
charity. 

That period had great Jesuits by the hundred. 
Did Pascal not know them ? or did he disdain them? 

While Pascal was winning easy amusing triumphs 
by turning the poor modest names of obscure reli- 
gious into ridicule, did he not hear those glorious 
names which resounded through Europe ? 

This Francis R6gis was the legend of the time. 
On a certain Sunday he entered a tavern where some 



IN FRANCE. 207 



jolly fellows were indulging in debauch during the 
hour of High Mass. He preached to them — why 
did he meddle? They laughed at him. The austere 
Pascal would not have approved of that, nor yet of 
the brutal act of one of the young men who slapped 
Regis in the face. But, after all, how many wanton 
slaps are there in the Provincial Letters, and with- 
out the excuse of liquor ! 

To the one who had struck him, R§gis said : 
"Thank you, my brother; I have deserved worse 
than this ; but think of your soul." 

Listen ! Themistocles did almost as much, and 
that is his glory ; but what a difference ; Themisto- 
cles was a practical hero ; while a saint ! — we have 
nothing to do with those people ! 

What happened ? The poor young men, tipsy as 
they were, fell upon their knees and asked forgive- 
ness. That's the way ! Jesuits ! Kill-joys ! In 
Francis Regis' place a jolly fellow would have 
returned the blow and settled the matter without 
further spite. That is the Yvetot fashion. The 
God of ordinary people asks no more. Let us be 
indulgent i 

For myself I am willingly inclined to be indul- 
gent ! and, strange to say, the Jesuits are too ; but 
Pascal is against this ! Ah ! Pascal was not at all 



208 JESUITS! 



a gay dog, nor the Arnaulds, his employers, jolly 
fellows. Indulgence ! Jansenists ! they are two 
words that cannot be at peace together ! The Jan- 
senists were disposed to build an addition to hell ! 
Certainly no one would accuse them of ever having 
turned " the other cheek ;" they dealt a blow with a 
bludgeon in return for a half-playful tip, and their 
greatest anger against the Jesuits was caused by the 
indulgent humor of the Jesuits. Francis Regis, the 
angel of purity, in their eyes, followed a " relaxed 
system of morals'' and an " easy devotion ;" and yet 
he fell dead under his cross! 

God forbid that I should taunt or even criticise 
Pascal's conscience, for certain of his pages, learned 
by heart in my youth, are still embalmed in my 
memory. He had the lofty style of great souls, and 
I know nothing more beautiful than some of his 
sayings. 

Even in the Provincial Letters there are admira- 
ble things, but what a poison there is in success ! 
and how the vain-glory of success debases pride. 
Pascal's first intoxication was caused by the Ar- 
naulds' astonishment and admiration, men who were 
astonished at nothing and admired no one. 

The Arnaulds had tried a pamphlet; they were 
illustrious for the unmerciful ennui that moved 



IN FRANCE. 20 



slowly from their pens. They had made use of 
numerous assistants, and together had concocted so 
terrible a mess of ennui that they themselves were 
frightened by it, and Pascal too. 

Pascal took the manuscript to his room ; he 
corrected it, or wrote something new. Pascal read 
it to the Arnaulds, and the fatiguing, solemn, 
mournful Arnaulds fell upon their knees, marvel- 
ing that their own thoughts had been made 
brilliant. 

And the Arnaulds' expression of astonishment 
was very lively at finding the simple Pascal worth 
all the Arnaulds together. 

There is nothing so flattering as the sudden aston- 
ishment of one's master. Pascal accepted the 
Arnaulds for a master, and here I ought to say, 
that all the Arnaulds were not called Arnauld. 
They were called legion ; there was a whole convent 
of round-head Calvinistic Fathers, a clan, a camp ; 
it was Port Royal. 

Pascal was acknowledged by these at once. The 
Provincial Letters were born. The bastard Protes- 
tantism imagined by Jansenius to poison the faith by 
straining dogma and morals, by denying liberty and 
good works, by substituting pharisaical rigor for 
charity, had at last an unhoped for and great 
apostle ! 



210 JESUITS! 



It must be confessed that in many things astonish- 
ment is the half of success. The success of the 
Provincial Letters was enormous because they as- 
tonished the public much more than they had sur- 
prised the Arnaulds. Was this really Pascal? Had 
the man whose heart had sent forth those fiery darts 
of love, found a treasure of cold and malicious hatred 
in the same heart? Above all things, it was curious! 
The great Pascal, the solemn Pascal, suddenly become 
comical ! The dignified Pascal dancing a fandango 
in the dress of a pamphleteer! Oh, it was mirth- 
provoking, and his enemies, as was natural, ap- 
plauded him more highly than his friends. But was 
there need of all this? And would not the least of 
the Arnaulds have sufficed to torture Aristides for 
the amusement of the Athenians? 

I have said Jansenism was only disguised Calvin- 
ism. I shall add that it was ill-disguised; it was 
the same error with an additional falsehood. The 
Abbe de Saint-Cyran, in speaking of Calvin, said to 
the indignant St. Vincent de Paul : Bene sensit, male 
locutus est — he thought well, but spoke badly! The 
Arnauld family which had undertaken to translate 
Calvin into a pseudo-orthodox language, had been 
Calvinistic for a long while, and still remained so at 
bottom : Port Royal, disguising its banner, accused 



IN FRANCE. 211 

the Jesuits of hypocrisy. That is the eternal tactics 
of falsehood. 

This is the explanation of the struggle begun 
between the Company of Jesus and the new sect. 
The Jesuits fought with energy, for it was a vital 
question for the Church and for France. Struck by 
the Holy See's anathema, suspected by authority, 
but openly embraced or secretly favored by a great 
number of members of Parliament and of the Uni- 
versity, the Jansenist heresy, unable to defend its too 
apparent errors, thanks to Pascal's pen, found means 
to impute imaginary errors to the Jesuits. The Pro- 
vincial Letters were merely a diversion, rendered 
powerful by the author's personality. That is all 
there was in them. 

Why did not the Jesuits reply in the same tone ? 
In the first place they had not a Pascal. But even 
had they one, they would have blunted the too keen 
point of his pen. 

I smile at the thought of the many smiles that will 
be caused by this assertion. Not only the Jesuits 
would not have furnished their Pascal with the 
abundance of false or mutilated texts which orna- 
ment the Provincial Letters, but they would have 
said to him, " Pardon as St. Francis Regis has done ; 
remember Loyola's words, do not strike. The Com- 



212 JESUITS! 



pany of Jesus' advocate is forbidden to strike, for it 
bears the name of him who said to his apostles : 
"Odio eritis omnibus propter nomen meum." * We 
are the children of Jesus, and as far as men can 
accomplish so splendid a duty, we desire to give 
love in return for all hatred's insults." 

Ah ! Jesuits, eh ! Jesuits ! Jesuits ! We must 
crush those serpents ! 



Louis XIV ! Great king, greater ego, who ab- 
sorbed a great century ! 

Each of the elements composing this glory is 
immense and would suffice to dazzle an age ; with 
precious blocks, gigantic in size, for material, a pan- 
theon was constructed of the same calm and square 
proportions as the king, so that at the sight of this 
monument of imposing symmetry, traced and orna- 
mented to fastidiousness, one is tempted to inquire 
how the royal architect was able to conceal so much 
that was superb ! 

* " You shall be hated by all men for my name's sake." 



IN FRANCE. 213 



Henry the Great, at the moment when death sur- 
prised him, was about to erect a mountain out of 
nothing ; Louis the Great arranged a handsome and 
regular colonnade on a level terrace, out of moun- 
tains. 

Henry IVs desire survived in Richelieu ; Louis 
XIV's testament was rent in pieces over his tomb. 
Bossuet, Fenelon, Bourdaloue, Corneille, Racine, 
Conde, Turenne, without any transition, gave place 
to the atheistical guests of Philip of Orleans, a man 
of a good heart, they say, an amiable wit who gave 
out the first oracles of Voltaire's religion in the 
midst of his little feasts. 

I shall say little of Louis XIV's reign. Perhaps 
I do not estimate at its just value the great part 
played by the Jesuits in that time. It is not the 
sort of greatness I like. I shall merely say that 
violence against the Holy See is not an invention of 
our time. The revolution's germ lay in absolutism. 
He who is accused of having one day said, " JJEtat 
c'est moi" if he did say it, unbridled the thunderbolt. 

The Jesuits had the dangerous honor of confessing 
Louis XIY : it must have been a hard task. It is 
easy to understand the embarrassment of the guar- 
dians of that conscience, at once vast and narrow, 
which thought that sin was smothered by being 
19 



214 JESUITS! 



clothed in etiquette, and scandal disarmed by the 
patronage of majesty. 

This king, it is true, showed himself wondrously 
fine in misfortune, and then it was that the influence 
of good men w r as felt. He is rightfully glorious in 
history ; for by the will of Providence, he harbored 
a whole nation of geniuses ; but I am one of those 
who cannot pardon him for having ceremoniously, 
solemnly, almost religiously, propped the robust 
wood of the legitimate throne by illegitimate ma- 
terial, so rotten, that less than half a century later 
the whole fabric gave way under the chaste sanctity 
of Louis XVI. 

Still less shall I speak of the Regency, an imme- 
diate chastisement of Louis XIV's errors. 

As to Louis XV, that really unfortunate prince 
who died in shame, as his ancestors had lived in 
glory, it is different : here we must halt, for in this 
leign it is that kings, ministers, parliaments, courtiers, 
and philosophers, definitively lay siege to the Com- 
pany of Jesus, the advanced work of the Church's 
fortifications, and take it by a furious general assault. 

It can be said that the war had been going on 
since the hour of the Order's birth. Everything 
connected with revolt, sensualism, doubt, incredulity, 
above all heresy, open or disguised, hated these un- 



IN FRANCE. 215 



compromising defenders of orthodox certitude, of 
obedience, and of pure spirituality. 

They deranged the game of the austere comedians 
of parliamentarism much more than they thwarted 
the attempts of the open rebels of the pretended 
philosophy; and certainly there was less venom in 
the hatred they received from avowed Protestants 
than in the blind, snuffling rage that dwelt in the 
hypocritical hearts of the ever disguised nephews of 
Jansenius; the people Moliere has portrayed in 
Tartufe. 

Now those false apostles whose crime and misfor- 
tune it was, like Judas, to mistrust the Infinite 
Goodness, and to be scandalized at the emptying of 
a whole vase of precious perfume at Jesus' feet, 
crowded about the avenues to the throne. In all 
the court's, the parliament's, and even of the clergy's 
oratories — for Cardinal de Noailles had many adhe- 
rents — you would have found those crucifixes where 
God is represented with the arms stretched upwards 
and not extended, to give representation to the blas- 
phemy, calumniously attributed to St. Augustine by 
the Abbe de Saint Cyran, that " Jesus did not die 
for all, but for a small number." 

Jesus! love! the immense! absolute charity! 
fencing in his goodness and limiting his mercy ! 



216 JESUITS! 



The Son of the great God, the father of the true, of 
the only, equality, reducing the divine amplitude of 
his wings in order to embrace as few souls as possi- 
ble ! What an aberration of upstart pride ! An 
insanity of middle-class pretensions ! 

For it is impossible not to remark that the bit- 
terest enemy of aristocracy is precisely the class that 
hatches all revolutions; the class of the Arnaulds, 
that terrible doctrinaire middle class, hating what is 
above it, and what is below, demolishing with one 
hand, oppressing with the other, and periodically 
inciting the lower against the upper class — a specu- 
lation on which it has subsisted for a hundred and 
fifty years, and which is killing our country. 

Authority which resided in the court, was falling 
lower and lower in everyone's esteem. The Regency 
had translated the ceremonious poem of Louis XIV's 
errors into obscene language. That foul place, the 
Palais Royal, sparkled with wit, and its walls echoed 
to atheistical song ; the contagion of its foulness 
was spread over Europe, and Louis XV's infancy 
breathed the pestilential atmosphere. France was 
at the head of the gay bastardizing of royalty, and 
all the other courts followed as closely as they could. 

But one king remained; Maria Theresa, and as 
her interests were not with France, she contentedly 



IIST FRANCE. 217 



looked on as the descendant of the house of Austria's 
greatest enemy, the heir of Henry IV, was carried 
along in the swollen gutter to unknown infamy. 

When M. le due de Choiseul took charge of affairs 
it was said that for the first time since the founda- 
tion of our monarchy a French minister was pen- 
sioned by foreigners, and they who said this added 
that the pension was paid by Austria. Besides, 
Prussia was paying other pensions, and the proverb 
"working for the king of Prussia," originated in 
these times, when a duke and peer, a marshal of 
France, built a residence with that sort of money, so 
that the house was called the " Pavilion de Han- 
ovre." 

The level of patriotic pride was capable of falling 
still lower, for here at Paris, an illustrious writer, the 
idol of the crowd, in time of war publicly flattered 
the Prussians without losing his popularity : quite 
the contrary. It was the fashion among the poets 
to deal unmercifully with our generals by weaving 
garlands for the victor of Rosbach : not gratis, of 
course. These poets were not Jesuits. 

It is certain that Rome itself felt the universal 

weakness. And there is nothing surprising in this. 

Throughout the ages, a prophetic spirit has always 

breathed about the chair of St. Peter, and the fo're- 

19* 



218 JESUITS! 



boding of the convulsion soon to upset the world 
weighed heavily, no doubt, on the sad heart of the 
Sovereign Pontiffs. With the clear eye of faith 
they saw that everything which had been the glory 
of the European family was tottering, and the kneel- 
ing Church beheld with sorrow the waves of shame 
that were welling up about thrones before washing 
them away. 



One day, Madame de Pompadour, the corrupt 
patron of the philosophy which sent people to 
the Bastille for a joke and, without any spite, left 
them there to scratch the stones with their nails 
till death freed them, the same woman who helped 
M. de Choiseul to betray Montcalm in Canada, and 
to persecute Dupleix in India, as well as to kill La 
Bourdonnais with disappointment and Lally-Tolen- 
dal with the axe — a charming woman, otherwise, 
protecting bold wits, and in her moments of good 
humor coquetting innocently with Voltaire — one day 
Mine, la Marquise de Pompadour was taken with 
the disturbing idea of doing her Easter duty. 

Why? nobody knows. Some claim that this wish 
came from King Louis XV, who in the innermost 



IN FRANCE. 219 



of his sad life still preserved a leaven of "super- 
stition." 

At all events, Mme. de Pompadour, forgiving 
God, was going to do Him the kindness to receive 
Him, but without any preparation, in n&gligL As 
for purifying her conscience (M. de Richelieu, think- 
ing no doubt of the Augean stables, had said mali- 
ciously : "How can it be done? Hercules is dead!") 
that of course was as much out of question as giving 
up her charge whose emoluments were as great as 
M. de Choiseul earned by his trade. 

She inquired into the ways and means necessary 
to conclude this "affair" which, according to her, 
would be for the credit of religion. Women of her 
sort are surrounded by a vile throng of flatterers; 
every one told her that it was very generous on 
her part, for she could do without God, and God 
would be only too happy to enter the good graces 
of a person of her importance. " The priests," 
said they to her, "require this and that from those 
who come to them, but then, Mme. de Pompa- 
dour, the ' cousin ' of Maria Theresa, of Austria, 
and M. de ChoiseuPs patron, of course, will not 
be treated like a simple princess of the blood. 
Make your conditions, and they will be accepted 
in advance." 



220 JESUITS! 



And notice that the unbridled platitude of these 
courtiers was much nearer than they thought to the 
merciful and splendid truth. The Catholic crucifix 
extends its arms very wide. If Antoinette, wife 
of Detiolles, Marquise de Pompadour, princess of 
Neuchatel, the most shameful of the shameful crea- 
tures of that disgraceful epoch, had found within 
herself a single atom of repentance, the arms of that 
immense love would have been opened to receive 
and to welcome her penitence. 

Everything was as certain as the gospel in the 
burlesque affirmations of those court parrots. God 
would be happy, too happy — the great, the eternal 
God — to be taken into the good graces of this 
sinner. 

And yet there was not a priest in the world who 
would have required any more of her, poison to 
the core, crying scandal as she was, than he would 
have demanded of the poorest and humblest beggar- 
woman at the church door. 

But there was not an atom of heart in the body 
of that courtezan, old in years and a veteran in 
infamy. Mary Magdalen had loved exceedingly; 
Mine, de Pompadour had traded much, hated much, 
soiled much. She was of Judaic race, and she was 
attempting to drive a bargain with heaven. 



IN FRANCE. 221 



She felt this, and she hesitated. 

It is said that in these circumstances M. de Choi- 
seul, the philosopher of state who ruined our colo- 
nies, who starved our soldiers in the field, and who 
reduced our provinces to despair in their attempts to 
pay the monstrous " appointments " of the favorite 
— it is said that this man, worthy of profound pity, 
the apparent cause of all the disasters of France ; 
this man who suffered the degradation of being 
praised ; he who was the minister of kings by the 
assassins of kings, desired to plant the seed of inex- 
tinguishable hatred in the base mind of the fallen 
woman. He needed that. 

He whispered in Mme. de Pompadour's ear the 
words : " Company of Jesus !" The Jesuits' " relaxed 
system of morals " which was the famous common- 
place of Jansenist calumny, naturally occurred to 
him. Those whom Pascal had accused of " easy " 
devotion would know how to smoothe all difficulties 
and to arrange everything for their best interests. It 
is a certain fact that Mme. de Pompadour sought 
the Jesuits to ask their cooperation in the commis- 
sion of a sacrilege. 

They say, too, that the Fathers violently and in- 
dignantly repulsed the unworthy proposition. This 
is a mistake ; the indignation of the Fathers was 



222 JESUITS! 



dumb because their conscience was calm. It seems 
from all the documents that Mme. la Marquise de 
Pompadour was received with the pity due to her 
ignorance and moral misery. She was told what 
every one is told in the tribunal of Penance. If she 
began and continued a sacrilegious negotiation, as 
seems to have been the case from the insane appeal 
which she made to the Holy Father, it appears from 
the result of that very appeal that she was shown to 
the door with the same firmness, tempered with kind- 
ness, as would have been displayed in the case of 
any sinful woman so devoid of the simplest religious 
education as to claim a place at the Bridegroom's 
feast without having put on the nuptial robe. Noth- 
ing less ought to have been done ; nothing less could 
be done. 

As full of clemency as this refusal might be in 
its form, Mme. la marquise did not forgive it, and 
the destruction of the Jesuits was sworn. History 
is full of great catastrophies produced by the pettiest 
of causes. 

We have already spoken of the establishments or 
" reductions; " those model little republics, founded 
by the Fathers, and which, according to Protestant 
philosophic and other writers, brought back the 
Golden Age to those far-off countries. Fenelon had 



IN FRANCE. 223 



them in his mind when he made the picture of 
Salente, and later, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, after 
Jean- Jacques, found in them the principal features 
of his charming Etudes de la nature. The Reduc- 
tions of Paraguay and of Uruguay which Pombal 
was to destroy, were especially celebrated ; but there 
were others likewise in the Antilles. No one, cer- 
tainly, would have dreamed that this work of civili- 
zation, universally appreciated and praised, would 
become the germ of disease and death for the Com- 
pany of Jesus. 

It was so, however. Mme. de Pompadour's rebuff 
was an occasion not to be lost, and the directing 
minister seized it gladly. Let us listen to the 
Protestant historian Sismondi: "The mission estab- 
lishments, where the converted Indians labored for 
a common fund, were administered by the Fathers ; 
and these religious had been obliged to undertake 
an immense economic administration ; they had to 
see to procuring food and clothing for an entire 
people. ... * Father de la Valette, a Frenchman, 
the business manager of the missions at Martinique, 



*" The intervention of the Jesuits was especially needed to 
protect the ignorant Indians from the cupidity of European 
traders." Ad. Archier. La Comp. de Jesus, p. 257. 



224 JESUITS! 



was involved in great mercantile interests there, but 
several of his vessels were captured by the English 
in 1755, before any declaration of war, at the same 
time that they surprised the whole merchant marine 
of France." 

Here was the point of departure, calmly set forth 
by an historian, who cannot be taxed with par- 
tiality for the Company. Afterwards, it is true, 
matters were aggravated. 

The English government's conduct was the result 
of its contempt for Choiseul's administration. 

The foreigner's foot was on our neck, and England 
thus rewarded the pliancy of our kneeling ministry. 
The responsibility of the misfortune to the merchant 
marine in general, and the Martinique fleet in par- 
ticular, rests on the administration, which, far from 
assisting the numerous victims of its stupidity, 
treated it in every way with the utmost rigor. 

Father de la Valette/* despoiled of an enormous 
sum of which he was but the administrator, was 
inexcusably wrong in disobeying the Constitutions, 
He speculated to fill up the void in the now empty 



* He was earnestly defended by the colonial authority. He 
was descended from the elder brother of Jean de la Valette, 
the Grand-Master of Rhodes. 



IN FRANCE. 225 



common treasure-chest, and his speculations were 
unfortunate. His creditors attacked and brought 
the Company into the case. 

But before passing judgment on this matter, where 
the customary partiality of the Parliament, when 
the Jesuits were concerned, sought and found a pre- 
text for at once flattering the favorite's recent anger, 
and the minister's inveterate hatred, we shall quit 
Paris and cross the frontier into Portugal, where 
Pombal, the " Great Marquis," fought that first bat- 
tle with the Company of Jesus which was to have a 
disastrous influence on the situation of the institute 
in France and in the entire world. 

And we are glad to be led by the chronological 
order of events to take a look at the royal tiger 
before going on to inspect the wolves and the foxes 
which, together, formed the pack that hunted saints 
and martyrs. 



20 



POMBAL. 



" What seems very strange," says Voltaire, " in 
their disaster," (the disaster of the Jesuits,) " is that 
they were proscribed in Portugal for having departed 
from their institute, and in France, for having con- 
formed to it." * 

Strange is taken here in the sense of curious, gay, 
and amusing. And in fact, all philosophical Europe 
was greatly amused at this affair, though, at the 
same time, it did not hesitate to speak harshly of 
the butchers who were spilling blood, and to indulge 
in sarcasm at the expense of the silly idiots who 
were throwing down an edifice which for two centu- 
ries had been the bulwark of royalty. 

* Steele de Louis XV, t. XXII des (Euvres, p. 354. 

227 



228 JESUITS! 



Glad as the Encyclopaedia undoubtedly was, it 
could do no less than scold a little. It was the 
journalism of that time. A little pity was not unbe- 
coming, nor a little bit of justice either with those 
self-elected judges who were ever ready to prattle on 
all sorts of cases at short notice. It gave an appear- 
ance of impartiality to their pleading; and it is kind, 
easy and agreeable to mourn for a slain enemy. 
Crocodiles weep. 

In one of the principal squares of Lisbon there is 
a statue of King Joseph Emmanuel, the son of 
John V. At the foot of the statue is his minister, 
Don Sebastian de Carvalho y Mel ho, Count of 
Oeyras, Marquis of Pombal, whom the liberal 
school of Portugal compares to Cardinal Richelieu ; 
these pleasantries do not violate international law. 
We must not judge a country by the square miles it 
contains, and if Portugal is small in extent and 
population, it is great in its history. 

The annals of Portugal contain more men than 
would fill all the squares of illustrious Lisbon with 
statues: kings, navigators, generals, poets; Camoens, 
Albuquerque, Gama, Cabral, Henry, John, Pedro; 
and the empire of Brazil is its work, like itself, 
built up by the hands of the chivalrous race of Bra- 



POMBAL. 229 



ganza. Her merchants were fortunate, bold and 
powerful, her fleets covered the seas, her colonies 
were spread over the world, her nobility is one of 
the proudest and most ancient of Europe; and if 
her ancient influence is considerably diminished, it is 
because no Catholic nation has ever escaped unpun- 
ished which courted Protestant pity or that wonder- 
ful English disinterestedness that tends to create 
Irelands everywhere. 

There are countless crumbs of the Portuguese cake 
in the immense pockets of her generous friend, Eng- 
land. Certain sorts of protection cost but little, and 
there are many Portuguese who believe that it will 
be long before Portugal recovers from the showy 
strategic agony which Arthur Wellesley made her 
suffer, in order that he might obtain a string of titles, 
numerous pensions, his belly full of English glory, 
and, at last, be called " His Grace, the Duke of 
Wellington!" 

Without at all twitting or blaming those who com- 
pare the Marquis of Pombal to Cardinal Richelieu — 
for these patriotic mistakes are worthy of respect — I 
take the liberty of being astonished that the Portu- 
guese had chosen to erect statues on the banks of the 
Tagus to the king who permitted and the minister 
who notoriously attempted to betray their country 
20* 



230 JESUITS! 



by setting Calvin's furred cap down upon the noble 
brow of the children of Aviz. Were not the Portu- 
guese Anglicised enough without that ? 

I am not sure that we should harbor resentment 
for this against Joseph of Braganza, for most of his 
thinking was done in the brain of his minister; but 
it is certain that Pombal had formed this project, 
that he had begun its execution, and that he was 
only stopped by the determined if quiet resistance of 
the Portuguese to any abandonment of the Catholic 
faith. Throughout his life, Pombal worked for the 
English while pretending to be an enemy. Never 
did Portuguese more haughtily oppose (in appear- 
ance) the invading caresses of England than he, and 
yet he had in his portfolio the famous project of 
marriage between the Princess of Beira and the 
Duke of Cumberland, which would eventually have 
made the latter heir to the crown of Braganza. 

It does not follow that Pombal was devoted to the 
English; he was devoted to no one; he was greedy 
of power, and he sought it by any and every means. 
What is certain, is that the Jesuits were opposed to 
English domination in Portugal and, consequently, 
to this marriage. "The Duke of Cumberland," says 
the Mareehal de Belle-Isle, "had flattered himself 
with the hope of becoming king of Portugal. I 



POMBAL. 231 



have no doubt he would have succeeded, had not the 
Jesuits, who were confessors to the royal family, op- 
posed it." * 

And he adds, " That was a crime that could never 
be forgiven them." f 

Here we already have one motive of PombaPs 
hatred for the Jesuits ; he intended to import Pro- 
testantism into Portugal, and in all conscience the 
Jesuits could not agree to that : first grief. 

But Pombal had other reasons for hating the 
Fathers. First of all he was so excessive in his 
passion for the philosophical doctrines that the small 
knot of atheists who ruled the encyclopaedic school 
at Paris, more than once were forced to deny him as 
a compromising ally. M. de Choiseul, who was to 
end by following him, step by step, along the road 
of persecution, began by laughing at him in com- 
pany with his protectress; and his sister Mme. de 
Grammont pleasantly asked the Ambassador of Spain 
(where, by the way, Charles III was having Pom- 
baPs pamphlets burned by the executioner), " Does 
the great marquis of the little country always have 
a Jesuit astraddle of his nose?" 



* Testament politique, p. 108. flbid. 



232 JESUITS! 



In the second place, Pombal had flattered the 
Jesuits very much at the opening of his career, going 
so far as to have his second son wear the habit of 
their Order; he was spiteful against them for his 
own platitude. In the third place, the Jesuits were 
very powerful ; as the Marechal de Belle-Isle has 
just told us, they heard the confessions of all the 
members of the royal family.* People like the 
Marquis of Pombal are jealous of every power, and 
envy is the most vital element of hatred. 

Finally, ancient and modern moralists have as- 
serted, that every man who does evil detests his 
victim ; as an example, the instinctive and in- 
curable aversion which the spoliator feels for the 
one he has despoiled. Now the Marquis of Pombal 
was the sworn despoiler of the Jesuits, and he had 
ruined per fas et nefas their magnificent establish- 
ments of Maragnon, of Uruguay, and others, as 
history says, not without soothing his conscience by 
a considerable addition to his personal wealth. - 

By this enumeration, which is not at all complete, 
we see that the great marquis had numerous and 



* Father Joseph Moreira was confessor of the king ; Fr. 
Timothy de Oliveira, of Maria, Duchess of Braganza ; Fr. da 
Costa, of Dom Pedro of Portugal. 



POMBAL. 233 



solid reasons for abhorring the Company of Jesus. 
The first of these excuses, in point of time, was the 
Jesuit habit put on his son to win the good-wil) of 
Father Moreira, the king's confessor ; the most im- 
portant was the destruction of the establishments of 
Uruguay, and the violent expulsion of thirty thou- 
sand Christians from Parana in order to facilitate 
the working of the gold mines of which, according 
to PombaPs belief, the Jesuits had been enjoying the 
benefit, and which turned out to be a pure chimera. 

This was some years before la Valette's case. The 
French court made light of the great marquis's dis- 
appointment, but this court was soon to begin a less 
sanguinary but a more unreasonable war against the 
Order. Pombal did not forgive the Jesuits the ter- 
rible misery he had brought upon the earthly par- 
adise of their poor Indians, nor the absence of gold 
mines, nor the witticisms of Mmes. de Pompadour 
and de Grammont. 

At the moment when he entered the ministry he 
was a man of fifty, worn out in private conflicts and 
by a life of unceasing political efforts which had not 
always prospered. He had other enemies than the 
Jesuits. In his younger days he had offended the 
high nobility by outraging many venerable senti- 
ments, and above all by publicly marrying one who 



234 JESUITS! 



was called a girl of blue blood (sangre azul) Perhaps 
he had to put up with too much haughtiness on this 
score. He took horrible vengeance for this, and if he 
is compared to Cardinal Richelieu by his admirers, 
on this account, they certainly do him injustice. 
Pombal deserves the prize of honor for ferocity and 
should be compared to no one. 

In France he passed for a skilful minister. His 
fine conduct during the earthquake at Lisbon had 
been remarked, and excepting the Jesuits, whose 
devotion at that time became legendary, no one 
showed more spirit and courage than he. M. de 
Choiseul, in spite of the witticisms which he aimed 
at him to amuse the king, held him in some esteem, 
and hoped that " the good Carvalho," as he called 
him, would some day or other rid the universe of 
that annoying Jesuit, whom all the philosophers and 
all the Jansenists ever seemed to have " astraddle of 
their nose." 

The Uruguay matter and the hostile attitude which 
Pombal was the first to assume against the Holy See, 
were not calculated to disappoint that hope. 

From 1750 to 1758, Pombal did not quite break 
with the members of the Company who were still 
in favor at the court, and he employed himself in 
great efforts to win the nobility. He did not sue- 



POMBAL. 235 



ceed. The nobility hated him and it was right; but 
it despised him, and there it was wrong. 

During the night of the 3d or 4th of September, 
1758, in the midst of an utter calm, without their 
being the slightest political circumstance to cause or 
explain such an act, an attempt at assassination was 
made on the person of the king of Portugal. Joseph 
had been reigning for eight years. He was in the 
forty-third year of his age. His manners were no 
worse than those of the princes of that time ; his 
character was devoid of wickedness ; on several oc- 
casions he had shown an honorable care for the 
public welfare. 

As a king, he partook of the weakness common 
to so many kings and willingly let others do his 
thinking; he saw with others' eyes; he submitted 
easily to the influence of his minister who had suc- 
ceeded in inspiring him with an uneasy jealousy of 
his brother Dom Pedro, who was a young prince, 
well liked by the people. This Pedro of Braganza 
had too many partisans in Lisbon ; the king had not 
enough. It is the everlasting story of the brothers 
of kings, Pedro among the number, whose adven- 
tures are constantly shaking the confidence of their 
elder brothers. And this gives a fine opportunity 



236 JESUITS! 



for a favorite to win credit, for an unwholesome 
atmosphere of mistrust is breathed in the neighbor- 
hood of thrones. Constantinople is the only place 
that finds a remedy for this uneasiness; the sultans 
bowstring their brothers and all is quiet. 

For a long while Pombal worked upon the weak 
mind of his sovereign by vague insinuations. At 
first he feigned that he himself was threatened with 
assassination, and in the summer of 1754 he had 
Joseph sign a really extraordinary decree, providing 
" for the case that a minister of state should be assas- 
sinated." * 

Nevertheless Joseph was never considered a fool- 
utterly. There are shades. The above-mentioned 
decree assimilated the future contingency of the 
above-mentioned assassination to the crime of Use- 
majesty and a magistrate, the senator Gonzales 
Cordeiro, was charged to make a "continual and 
unlimited inquest" regarding the matter of this 
dream. 

Do not smile! Ah! The number of prisons was 
trebled at once and still room was lacking. Forty 



*It was said, in this decree of the month of August, 1754 
that a minister of state might be assassinated by some one' 
contrivance," (Cretiueau-Joly, t V p 124) 



POMBAL. 237 



years before Paris, Lisbon had its reign of terror. 
Informers went about in the city earning the prom- 
ised reward for the arrest of every man who wished 
to assassinate the minister of state ! 

The philosophers of the banks of the Seine were 
almost displeased, and when the rumor of these ex- 
cesses reached Paris, they accused the philosopher of 
the banks of the Tagus of improving on the mistakes 
of the Inquisition, but Pombal was not disturbed by 
these critics. He was only at the beginning of his 
road and already his enemies were falling like sheep. 
I repeat: the Portuguese nobility were wrong to 
despise that man. 

He was able for everything, decrees, libels, disturb- 
ances,* searches, proscriptions, confiscations; he was 
writer, statesman, locksmith, executioner; he had 
talent, great talent ; and he belonged to the side of 
"generous ideas" for he was combating the Church ! 

His axe was generous, his torch generous, his sus- 
picion generous; everything on that side is generous, 
even hypocrisy married to ferocity ! 

As might be expected, in spite of the fantastic 
precautions of the decree of 1754, the Marquis of 

* "Witness that of Oporto, gotten up in favor of the English 
while the minister ostensibly was opposing English influence 
at Lisbon. 

21 



238 JESUITS! 



Pombal was not assassinated at all. At the end of 
four years, the decree having produced all that was 
possible in the way of arbitrary arrests, exile, con- 
demnation and spoliation, weariness began to appear 
among the hired informers, and the fidalgos began to 
breathe again when the nocturnal attempt occurred 
on the 3d of September. 

The king went out from the Tavora hotel and re- 
turned to the palace, not in his own carriage, but in 
one belonging to a rich man of the small nobility, 
named Antony Tejeira. At a crossroads two pistol 
shots, others say four, were fired at his majesty by 
some one unseen. Who was this some one? Was it 
not the very author of the decree himself? The 
king was struck on the right arm. It was about 
two years after the stabbing affair of Damiens. . . . 

Jesuits ! What a magnificent opportunity ! Against 
every appearance of truth, against common sense, 
Damiens' knife had been charged with being a 
Jesuit,* the nameless pistols were made to be a 
Jesuit against all certainty. 



* Voltaire wrote, refusing to compromise himself in the 
shamelessness of this accusation (letter of March 3d, 1763): 
M My brothers, I have not spared the Jesuits, but I should 
raise up posterity in their favor were I to accuse them of a 
crime from which Europe and Damiens have exonerated them. 
I should be only a vile echo of the Jansenists. ..." 



POMBAL. 239 



In the presence of these men whom he had checked 
in the cherished path of their triumphant devotion 
beyond the sea, whom he had pillaged, insulted, per- 
secuted in every possible manner, Pombal felt himself 
so guilty that in the innermost of his heart he could 
find repose only in their death. 

Jesuits ! he raised that high-sounding cry, which 
never fails to awaken every evil passion, just 
as the very name, the divine name it envelopes. 
And he invited the Jews to the eternal feast of 
Calvary. 

But as he detested the great family of the 
Portuguese nobility almost as heartily as the great 
family of Jesus, he was anxious to kill two birds 
with one stone, to massacre all his enemies at 
once. 

Hence the thick cloud which constantly shrouded 
that case where Pombal was at once accuser, judge 
and executioner. It seemed difficult to implicate 
the Jesuits, who were the confessors and friends of 
the king, as well as of the whole royal family, in an 
attempt against the life of the king. What interest 
could impel them to the crime? "Reus is est cui 
jprodest delictum" said the pagan wisdom of the 
Romans, " Look for the culprit in him who profits 
by the misdeed." 



240 JESUITS! 



Pombal, who was a doctor of the University of 
Coimbra, knew this maxim, and perhaps saw that it 
would condemn him before posterity. To be sure, 
the writers hostile to the Catholic faith were petting 
him somewhat, as became their trade, out of thank- 
fulness for the many Jesuit heads he had struck 
down, but they showed neither warmth nor sym- 
pathy. Beneath the praises heaped upon him in 
obedience to the Mot d'Ordre there was a vague re- 
pugnance—a certain reserve which M. de Choiseul, 
Mme. de Grammont and even the Encyclopaedia 
experienced in touching the excessively red hand of 
this state butcher. He was an ally to be treated with 
caution, for he was capable of bringing shame upon 
those whose shameful task he was performing. His 
pretended enemies, the English, were the only ones 
who really and heartily embraced him. 

But is it necessary to accuse Pombal of being the 
some one of the pistol shots? Certainly not, if by 
that is meant that he wished to kill his master; he 
had too much to lose by his master's death, as the 
sequel will show. But if it is meant that he could 
risk a bold comedy destined to work on Joseph's 
timid spirit, there is nothing historically opposed to 
this, and it is an opinion that arises above all from 
the savage duplicity attaching to the memory of the 



POMBAL. 241 



" Slayer of the Fathers." As his bloody business 
required this pistol shot, some have held that he had 
it done, for the criminal prosecution, which was ex- 
clusively his work, is an impudent model of dark- 
ness and subtlety. 

But real knowledge of the events is opposed to 
this presumption as well as to the opinion that the 
attack was the result of a simple mistake. Accord- 
ing to this last version, the king, riding in Tejeira's 
carriage, was mistaken for Tejeira, and thus re- 
ceived an assault meant for another. It was on 
this theory that Pombal indicted the unfortunate 
Duke of Aveiro, who was reserved for a frightful 
punishment. 

The truth is to be found in the popular opinion, 
related with slight alterations, in Pombal's own 
memoirs. This it is : 

Joseph of Braganza, a timid sort of Louis XV, 
also had gallant adventures, though less scandalous, 
for in this respect no court was equal to ours. The 
familiars of the palace of Alcantara alone knew that 
the king's promenades were often directed to a 
noble and spacious residence whose vast gardens 
extended to the mouth of the Tagus. The master 
of this dwelling was the old Marquis of Tavora, 
one of the first of the Portuguese nobility, and 
21* 



242 JESUITS! 



who passed for the chief of those particularly 
called jidalgos.* 

Pombal had been refused the marquis's daughter 
for his eldest son, and he had met the same affront 
from other families. He was not forgetful. 

Rightly or wrongly, it was said that the king, by 
his persistency, had insulted the young and beautiful 
Dona Teresa, Marchioness of Tavora, daughter-in- 
law of the marquis, and wife of his oldest son. In 
France, court manners had fallen so low that such a 
thing would have been accounted an honor, as sad 
examples in our history prove, but in spite of the 
skeptical contagion which was gaining way in Lis- 
bon, the old Portuguese blood still maintained its 
pride. 

I am far from saying that the young Marquis of 
Tavora did right to punish the king who had in- 
sulted him; on the contrary, I say that the king 
who insults deserves pity, and more than any other 
man since he is more criminal, being more powerful; 
but I say that outside of God's commandments, 
which equally reprobate the crime of the seducer 
and the husband's vengeance, Tavora, according to 

-Hidalgos in Spain. This name, common to all noblemen 
south of the Pyrenees, seems under Pombal's ministry to have 
taken a political significance. 



POMBAL. 243 



the fierce law of Portuguese honor, was creditor of 
his king's life. I am not judging the case, I am 
seeking for its facts ; as a Christian, Tavora should 
have pardoned ; as a fidalgo, according to the code 
of the fidalgos and the jurisprudence of the fearful 
Peninsular resentment, he was bound to strike the 
king even. 

It is probable that he struck. The exception 
made in favor of the young Marchioness of Tavora, 
in the midst of the wild cruelty inflicted on the rest 
of the family, at once proves the injury that was 
done and the vengeance exacted. And there is 
another noticeable proof in the interest sui generis, 
which the French ambassador, in obedience to an 
express order from his court, took in keeping the 
young woman safe and sound, while he gave not 
the slightest thought to the husband, whether guilty 
or not, martyred in the depth of his dungeon, nor to 
the innocent father, nor to the admirable mother, 
dying in their tortures. All Louis XV is there, 
and his age. 

And I add, that in all this, there is not the 
smallest room for the Jesuits, except what Pombal 
made for them by force. 

All writers have remarked Pombal's silence during 
three long months after the assault. The catlike side 



244 JESUITS! 



of his character is manifest. He is a tiger-cat and 
like all beasts of the sort, he creeps before making 
the spring upon his prey. He bounds upon his vic- 
tim that is sleeping unawares. 

On the 12th December, after sunset, mounted 
patrols scoured the city while numerous detachments 
of infantry took position in the narrow streets of the 
noble quarter. Lisbon wanted to know what feast 
was to be celebrated, for people no longer thought of 
the carriage affair, which many in fact did not believe 
in at all, and this was the case with the French court 
where M. de Choiseul said : " It is one of Carvalho's 
jokes ! " 

Towards seven in the evening, a squad of soldiers 
preceded by familiars, came to the principal entrance 
of the Tavora mansion. All the other doors had, in 
the meantime, been quietly guarded. Summons was 
made in the king's name, and at the same time 
torches were lighted. 

The king had more than once sought admittance 
to that knightly dwelling; the king was not bad, in 
spite of his slavish weakness; the king did not know 
what was happening at this hour; we must think so, 
out of compassion for his memory. 

The door opened. Soldiers and familiars entered 
and spread all over the house, which they treated 



POMBAL. 245 



like conquered territory. All human creatures, from 
the humblest servants, to their masters, were seized, 
and all taken to the new prison which Pombal had 
built under the college of St. Anthony. 

He built a great many, and not in vain, certainly, 
for at one time Lisbon counted more than four 
thousand political prisoners. Our '93 was beaten 
in advance, and such an exhibition of captives in a 
capital which then contained not 150,000 inhabi- 
tants, goes far beyond any other ill-omened curiosity 
of history. Our encyclopaedias of liberal education, 
are right in saying that Pombal was not an ordinary 
minister. 

Eleonora, the elder marchioness of Tavora, the 
same who had denied the hand of her daughter to 
Pombal, was torn from her husband and her chil- 
dren and shut up, from pity perhaps, in the vault of 
a convent. The other women, servants and ladies, 
gentlewomen, were piled up in the bottom of peni- 
tentiaries, where they were guarded with the strictest 
secrecy. 

Servants and gentlemen, the men disappeared as 
though the earth had closed over them. 

Thanks to the honorable, but rather exclusive 
solicitude, which M. le due de Choiseul, in obedi- 
ence to Mme. de Pompadour's " humanity," dis- 



246 JESUITS! 



played in his letters to M. de St. Julien, the French 
charge d'affaires, at Lisbon, we are able to say that 
the interesting marchioness Dona Teresa, was treated 
with exceptional kindness. At this Louis XV was 
highly pleased. 

At least one voice (St. Julien's) declared that the 
unhappy young woman had earned neither ChoiseuPs 
insulting attention, nor PombaPs infamous mercy. 
Moreover, it is said in the same letters, that Pombal 
was enraged at the mildness shown by some of his 
underlings to the unfortunate captives. 

Besides the Tavoras, a great number of other fidal- 
gos were arrested that night ; among them, Don Jose* 
de Mascarenhas y Lancaster, Duke of Aveiro, and 
cousin to Dona Eleonora, and who passed for the 
chief of the nobility ; a Souza, and a Melho, the 
first a relative of the king, the second a relative of 
the minister, Don Miguel de Atonguia, etc. 

On this same night too, some Jesuits were 
"caught"'; among them Fr. Hyacinth da Costa, 
confessor of the prince Dom Pedro. A great stupor 
fell upon Lisbon, and a greater fear. The expres- 
sion "state of siege" had not yet been invented, but 
the thing existed. No one but mercenary soldiers 
were seen in the streets, and the king no longer went 
out of his palace. A heavy hand weighed upon the 



POMBAL. 247 



city. Whoever uttered a doubt as to the guilt of 
the persons arrested, or betrayed the least feeling of 
pity, was at once seized. Among these strange pris- 
oners of state, whose extravagant number I have 
mentioned, were almost as many artizans as noble- 
men. 

Nevertheless, the likeness of some judicial form 
was needed, for the people were looking on and the 
king was an honorable man. Pombal resolved to 
play the farce of an inquest. It was played. He 
was losing caution and sense : his brain was crazed 
by the drunkenness of hatred. 

According to Portuguese law, the accused has a 
right to be tried by his peers ; the Duke of Aveiro 
and the elder Marquis of Tavora were both grandees 
of Portugal ; Pombal refused them this right. Nor 
did he bring them before the ordinary tribunals. 
He did what Protestants have always reproached 
authority with doing, only to have recourse to it 
whenever opportunity is offered, from Henry VIII 
and Calvin down to Kobespierre. He created a sort 
of revolutionary tribunal, without legal warrant, 
which he called the " Court of Mistrust " * (frank 
fatality of names!), and he naturally formed this 

*The name existed before Pombal, 



248 JESUITS! 



tribunal, as is always done, from his own creatures, 
among whom were two of his colleagues, Da Cunha 
and Corte-Real. 

And he himself peesided ! 

As it was not altogether an affair of the Jesuits 
yet, the Encyclopaedia was somewhat angry at the 
sight of these monstrosities. The philosophers of 
Paris loved the nobility as long as they lived. M. 
de Saint-Priest, that other just judge, is at great 
pains in his Hktoire de la Chute de% Jesuites to 
establish the "bad effect" brought about in the 
philosophical world by these astounding follies of 
Pombal. 

Because of a community of generous ideas people 
desired to help him, but he was really going too far, 
and M. de Saint-Priest even let this phrase escape: 
" The victims were pitied and the execution laughed 
at." From such a pen the avowal is significant, and 
yet, is it enough ? " Laughed at ! " Choiseul's 
corner was for a long while accustomed to do that. 
At Mine, de Pompadour's, Pombal was looked upon 
as a beast more laughable than ferocious. 

This was wrong, as you shall see ; I have already 
said so in regard to the Lisbon nobility. Pombals 
must not be disregarded ; it is not safe to laugh at 
hyenas. 



POMBAL. 249 



Minister and all as he was, Pombal, not satisfied 
with presiding in the court of mistrust, undertook 
the prosecution, something certainly unheard of, and 
which brought out the protests of the two most re- 
spectable legists of Portugal, Freiro, and Bucallao 
the senator. Going still further, Pombal drew up the 
sentence, which still exists, written with his own hand.* 

And what means were used in this philosophico- 
diabolical prosecution ? Distorted and even imag- 
inary evidence, shameful threats, torture, aye, above 
all, torture, and be sure you have correctly read 
this : torture never fails of success. It is something 
hateful in the hands of real judges, but in the claws 
of actors, who profane and caricature justice, it is 
admirable. 

The respectable dictionary for the use of young 
people, to which I have already made some grateful 
allusions, says, in speaking of Pombal, that he served 
his country with passion (truly !), that he was a skil- 
ful minister (to be proved !), but that he showed a 
too ardent leaning to philosophical ideas. 

Why too ardent? One cannot be too ardent in 
the pursuit of what is good, and he went no further 
than torture. 

* Cr6tineau- Joly, tome V, p. 158. 

22 



250 JESUITS! 



It is true, this torture brought about a judicial 
carnage whose recital makes the hair stand on end, 
but it was for a worthy motive: the torture and the 
carnage led to the extermination of the Jesuits. Let 
us not forget that ! Jesus said of the sister of Laz- 
arus : " Much will be forgiven her because she has 
loved much." Why should not our encyclopsedia- 
makers say of our philosophical minister : " Not 
only many but all things shall be forgiven him 
because he has much hated?" 

I am surprised — but why meddle? These disturb- 
ances are family quarrels between the big people who 
have made encyclopaedias and the little ones who are 
going to make them. 

The Tavoras and the other culprits were silent 
under the agonies of the extraordinary and liberal 
examination, but the unhappy Duke of Aveiro was 
overcome by the torments. He was a very great 
nobleman, but had not a robust heart. Half-dead, 
as he was, he accused his fellow unfortunates of all 
that was desired, and he accused also — the Jesuits ! 

It is true, he retracted as soon as he recovered his 
senses, but Pombal held on to this evidence, and re- 
fused to countersign the retractation. 

Sentence of death was given against the relatives 
and friends of Tavora 12th January, 1759. Pom- 



POMBAL. 251 



bal, in dread of the people's indignation, had the 
scaffold set up at night in the square of Belem, out- 
side the city, and it was guarded by two regiments 
of mercenaries. The platform, lit up by torches, 
was eighteen feet from the ground. The soldiers so 
blocked the square and the river bank that the spec- 
tators took refuge on the river itself, which was full 
of boats. From these there went up groans and 
curses. 

Thus passed the whole night of 13th January. 

At daybreak the Duke of Aveiro's servants ap- 
peared, were fastened at one of the corners of the 
scaffold, and burnt alive. 

The elder Marchioness of Tavora then arrived 
alone, a rope about her neck, a crucifix in her hand, 
and attired in apparel that was ragged from the in- 
struments of torture. Pombal must have been there 
somewhere, for his Memoires relate de visu the hor- 
rible and sublime scene — but where was the beautiful 
Teresa who alone had the tender pity of Louis XV 
and his minister Choiseul? She had just drawn 
down a thunderbolt upon the noble house that 
once upon a time had taken her as a well beloved 
daughter, and this thunderbolt had insulted her 
by sparing her. We, too, pity her — and pity none 
but her. 



252 JESUITS! 



Who would pity Dona Eleonora, pressing God 
against her heart as she raised her head covered 
with gray hairs? The executioner attempted to tie 
her feet. She said to him with anger : " Man, I beg 
thee, do not forget who I am ; touch me only to kill 
me." 

The executioner knelt before her; it is Pombal 
himself who has written that. 

Dona Eleonora took off her ring. She was of 
those races who pay for a service rendered ; even 
the last. 

" Here," said she to the executioner, giving him 
the ring, "all work is worth its hire; I have only 
this, and give it you that you may do your work 
well." 



The executioner arose and did his duty. When 
this worthy blood had reddened the machine, the 
others, first the old Marquis of Tavora, then the 
husband of Dona Teresa. Poor woman ! Do you 
think I am in jest? IS T o; I pity the woman who, 
out of respect to M. de Choiseul, was spared! 

Then followed other children of Eleonora, the 
oldest not yet twenty, her son-in-law, and, as some 



POMBAL. 253 



say, his daughters, then a long line of the officers 
and servants of her household, who died like 
Christians and like true Portuguese. 

The last was the unfortunate Duke of Aveiro, 
whose legs could scarcely bear the weight of his 
body. He was fastened to the wheel, his shoulders 
covered with rags, through a stupid refinement of 
vengeance. 

This Pombal was hard to satisfy. If ministers 
who are in the other world can be aware of these 
things, the great cardinal, who slew magnificently, 
must smile at the insulting comparisons that are 
made with him here below. 

As for vengeance, the dying Aveiro poured out 
bumpers of it for his enemy, who could quaff it in 
little swallows, for the unfortunate man took a good 
while to die. For nearly an hour, he struggled 
with the wheel that slowly broke his bones, and 
the pitiful cries of his agony were heard even in 
Lisbon. Pombal, in his Memoires, relates with a 
sort of satisfaction that the Duke was hereditary 
Grand Master of the king's household, President 
of the Palatial Court, a grandee of Portugal, of 
the first class, etc., etc. The house of Mascarenhas 
began with George, the natural son of John II, 
called the Perfect. 
22* 



254 JESUITS! 



Then they set fire to the machine, the scaffold and 
and all, and the charred bodies were hurled into the 
Tagus. 

Certainly, the " dark ages " offer few examples of 
so wisely planned a carnage. The preparations were 
perhaps a little confused, and a little less generous 
carelessness might have been desired in what took 
the place of a criminal prosecution, but the execution 
stands above all praise : it is absolutely complete, 
and I speak of it with all the respect due to a 
masterpiece. 

But why are the encyclopaedias silent about it? 
Do they not believe it, even when vouched for by 
the testimony of Pombal himself? 

And would it not be just by the recital of this 
splendid action to soften the reproach addressed, in 
a friendly manner, to this same Pombal, of having 
leaned too much to the enlightened ideas of his age? 

But the fact is, Pombal was a compromising 
favorite. That mother of dictionaries, the encyclo- 
paedia, would have pitched him overboard, had he 
not atoned for his massacre of fidalgos by his heca- 
tomb of Jesuits. Happily for him, blood washed 
out blood. 



POMBAL. 255 



After what goes before, it matters little to know 
that the Great Marquis kept in prison all those 
friends and relatives of the victims who had not 
shared their fate ; that he levelled their abodes and 
palaces, and that by his order salt was scattered over 
the places, where they had dwelt. The blazons of 
the Tavoras, and of their pretended accomplices, 
were effaced in the Knight's Hall of the castle of 
Cintra, where their escutcheons are still veiled in 
black like the portrait of Faliero, in the ducal 
palace of Venice. 

This last is a remarkable fact, because for long 
years the iniquitous judgment of the 12th of January, 
1759, has neither force nor virtue. In fact, Pombal 
lived long enough to feel in this world the weight of 
God's hand. During his lifetime, by an order of 
the high court, given solemnly the 7th of April, 
1781, all his victims were rehabilitated, and by the 
same order Pombal himself was punished. 

But this late and insufficient judgment came not 
until after the death of Joseph, who never shook off 
the yoke of his tyrant. In this respect, indeed, 
Pombal very distantly resembled Richelieu: his king 
was his slave. 

When he had thrown down walls enough, the 
great marquis set up a monument worthy of him- 



256 JESUITS: 



self: a great pillory, which, by an especial privilege, 
was reserved for the members of the high nobility. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that, by this 
time, the measure of his vengeance was full. Pom- 
baPs vengeance went further than that, and the fact 
is worth noting. 

Much later, in his implacable old age, he made 
use of the last breath of his dying political credit to 
force a granddaughter of the great Eleonora, Mar- 
chioness of Tavora, into marriage with his son, the 
Count of Oeyras. Does not this recall those nup- 
tials of fabulous times whence sprang the ancient 
tragedy? But the ways of God often lead across all 
human logic. From that dreadful union was born 
peace and happiness. That mingling of the blood 
of persecutors and of victims, which in our ordinary 
reckoning should have been barren, or, at least, pro- 
ductive of only the most unlucky fruit, brought forth 
a thriving progeny. 

Reconciliation overcame the tragical animosity, 
which filled the two races with hatred, and there 
now remains naught but the honor of a numerous 
and tenderly united family. 

We should like to have done with the Marquis of 
Pombal, but so far he had reached but one of the 
two objects of his hatred : the nobility. The other 



POMBAL. 257 



and principal one still shunned him. It may be 
said that the massacre of the fidalgos helped to 
strike at the heart of his true enemy, the Company 
of Jesus. 

He was filled with a savage joy when the agony 
of torture wrung from the unhappy Duke of Aveiro 
his accusation against the Fathers. As soon as he 
came to himself, and within the very hour that he 
made the charge, he begged in vain to be let make 
a retractation. Pombal immediately signed an order 
to imprison ten Jesuits, among whom were the Pro- 
vincial of Portugal, Henriquez, Fathers Malagrida, 
spiritual director of the Marchioness Eleonora; Oli- 
veira, confessor of Maria, Duchess of Braganza; 
Suarez Mattos, and also Joseph Moreiro, notwith- 
standing he was royal confessor. 

Father da Costa had been several days in irons, 
and was the first to undergo torture because Pombal 
secretly hoped he might be made to acknowledge 
something tending to compromise his penitent, the 
Prince Dom Pedro. 

Malagrida as the confessor of the Marchioness 
Eleonora, Mattos as the friend of the Ribeiras and 
the Atonguias, Father John Alexandre as having 
come back from the Indies in the one ship with the 
Tavoras, were condemned to death by an order of 



258 JESUITS! 



the 12th of January, but did not suffer their penalty 
at the same time as the massacre in the square of 
Belem. Pombal drew back a little to make a better 
leap, just as he had done after the attempt on the 
king's person. The tiger was gathering himself on 
his haunches. 

The tiger's second and greater bound was made in 
the shade, during the night before the 16th of Feb- 
ruary. All the houses of the Company in Portugal, 
colleges as well as residences, were surrounded at the 
same hour by familiars escorted by soldiers, and thus 
all the Jesuits of the kingdom upon awakening were 
prisoners. 

All the Jesuits of the kingdom were accused in a 
body and indiscriminately of having dabbled in the 
regicidal plot, and to give an idea of the unfortunate 
king's slavish condition, it may suffice to say that 
neither Joseph nor the queen could obtain permission 
to see Father Joseph Moreiro, for whom both one 
and the other bore the tenderest affection. 

Besides the general accusation, most of the Fathers 
were accused of having been the secret counsellors 
and friends of the conspirators, and of having fo- 
mented their hatred and aroused their discontent, 
either in the tribunal of penance, or in the inter- 
course of daily life. 



POMBAL. 259 



So vague an assertion was supported by a still 
vaguer foundation. All rested on a visit made by 
the Duke of Aveiro to the College of St. Antony : 
a visit, besides, that was plausibly explained by the 
duke's obligation, according to the laws of courtesy, 
to assist at a philosophical thesis sustained on that 
day by a young relative who was the heir of a great 
house. Plainly Porabal took small care to hide his 
audacity, since with so flimsy a pretext the names of 
three Fathers were inserted in the same sentence of 
death along with the Duke of Aveiro, the Tavoras 
and so many others. 

Among the condemned Fathers was the legen- 
dary Gabriel Malagrida, whose martyrdom we shall 
relate. 

No Jesuit climbed the scaffold in the square of 
Belem. It was not till the 28th of June that the 
minister gave his order for a general proscription. 
For months they had been crowded in new and old 
prisons and subjected to the most shameful treatment. 
The Slayer of the Fathers, as he had been called for 
a long while in Uruguay, had fully won this title. 
At the time of the persecution directed against the 
Company's establishments in South America, many 
of the professed and a number of novices or brothers, 
besides a host of native Christians who belonged to 



260 JESUITS! 



Jesus' family, had reddened the fields of the New 
World with their blood : those fields which their 
labor had fertilized and which the violence of the 
Portuguese agents reduced to barrenness. But those 
were only weak essays and must not be taken even 
as a far-off rehearsal of the bloody drama that was 
to be enacted in the mother-country. 

Pombal was intoxicated by the ill he was doing; 
his cruelty was bringing delirium to his brain; 
everything looked red to him, and a ferocious apo- 
plexy was turning his head. Others before him, 
and away back in ancient times, had used the prison 
as a deadly instrument of torture, but he so improved 
upon what had been done before his time that eight 
hundred wasted beings came out alive from his dun- 
geons, which had swallowed up nearly ten thousand 
victims.* 

Historians have reproduced several letters from 
these prisoners, more to be pitied than the living 
dead in the Piombi of Venice. Not all of them are 
from Jesuits, but there is one letter that is intensely 
Jesuitical, and it has been celebrated for the admira- 
ble meekness that breathes in every line. It is signed 



*The official report of the inquest, at the time of the revi- 
sion of the case under Queen Maria, gives 9,640. 



POMBAL. 261 



by Father Lawrence Kaulen who adds to his name, 
" Captive of Jesus Christ." It is dated in the prison 
or fort of St. Julian at Lisbon, October 12th, 1766. 
For seven years at that time, the innocent man, or 
saint rather, had been in irons, never uttering a com- 
plaint, and praying day and night for his tormentor, 
who was well pointed out to God's mercy : Dom Se- 
bastian de Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, etc. 

But why should Pombal and his friends believe in 
such things? This forgiveness even in the middle 
of torture is not likely, and I am afraid there may 
be some malice in the provoking pleasure, I feel in 
being set down for a hypocrite, when I exalt so noto- 
rious a lot of hypocrites ! 

Jesuits! Jesuits! Jesuits! assassins who never 
assassinate but always are assassinated ! proud men, 
who kiss the earth ; men of ambition, who make a 
vow to accept neither place nor honors ; calumniators 
who drink calumny, who swallow it without denial, 
and who render good for evil; incredible Jesuits, im- 
possible Jesuits, heirs of the divine infamy, I cannot 
understand you quite, for one should be a saint to 
penetrate your consciences, but I understand you 
enough to admire you passionately and to feel what 
is perhaps a culpable pride in sounding your praise 
as high as my voice will reach. 
23 



262 JESUITS! 



I do not ask your famous secret ; I think I know 
it; my crucifix has made it known to me; but I beg 
of you, Jesuits, O Jesuits, hated by all respectable 
writers and tenderly loved by me who am no one, 
speak low, in my ear, I shall not repeat it : tell me, 
ye murderers of kings, who protect and love you, 
why did you not plant ten, twenty, a hundred, a 
thousand, ten thousand of your historic poniards into 
the breast of Pombal ! 

Was this, too, because of your incurable dissimu- 
lation ? 

Is it in order better to abuse the universe, O ye 
astonishing jugglers, that ye slay your friends and 
spare your enemies? 

Pombal lasted eighty-two years. While you were 
firing your pistol at that poor miserable King Joseph, 
your penitent, were you slyly, treacherously, Jesuiti- 
cally, giving Pombal pills to prolong his life? 

I confess to having felt impatience and even anger 
in reading Father Kaulen's too fine letter, in which 
seven years of horrible imprisonment have awakened 
not the least resentment ; quite the contrary. I ought 
to have knelt down before that superhuman great- 
ness of soul ; I believe in it fully and regret the 
proud satisfaction I feel in believing in it, and the 
almost contemptuous pity those who do not believe 



POMBAL. 263 



in it cause me. I ought to have done so, and I do 
not say I have not. 

But across my admiration as a Christian something 
of manly feeling passed, and I asked myself if the 
heroism of martyrs has a right thus to encourage the 
cowardice of persecutors. 

Must the miraculous charity of the saint go so far 
as to arouse the boldness of the impious ? 

There are times when I find myself thinking that 
the Jesuits did not sufficiently resist the Marquis of 
Pombal, that there was too much meekness on their 
part and on the part of the Church herself, both in 
respect to that man and to his less bold imitator, 
Choiseul, and all the bloody apes who followed in 
the way of murder and spoliation. 

"Sublime meekness," an eminent writer has said : 
yet I am not sure, but there may be at times too 
much of this sublime meekness. 

Father Lawrence Kaulen's letter was quoted in 
full in the Journal de la litterature et des arts, pub- 
lished by the Protestant Christopher de Murr. It 
produced great effect in Europe, and was soon fol- 
lowed by Pombal's fall. It was written from the 
depth " of a dark and noisome underground dun- 
geon, where the clothes rotted from the damp," 
leaving the prisoner almost naked ; " the jailer very 



264 JESUITS! 



hard, and doing his best to increase the suffering n 
of the unhappy prisoners already broken by long 
torments, " offered liberty and the best sort of treat- 

merit, on condition of abjuring the institute ." 

It is needless to say that no one abjured. 

In that prison of St. Julian, where was wanting 
everything, care for the sick, aye, the consolation of 
the Host, air, clothing, even the bread that was so 
doled out as just to hinder those patient ones from 
dying; in those dreadful dungeons, where everything 
was niggard except the profusion of cruelty, there 
were " twenty-seven Fathers of the province of Goa, 
one of the province of Malabar, ten of that of Por- 
tugal, nine of Brazil, twenty-three of Maragnon, ten 
of Japan, twelve of the province of China/' in all 
eighty-two. " In this number were one Italian, 
thirteen Germans, three Chinese, fifty-four Portu- 
guese, two Spaniards, and three French men." The 
Frenchmen were released, not, be it understood, by 
M. de ChoiseuPs government, but through the queen, 
Maria Leczinska, in person. 

Of these eighty-two, thirty-seven Fathers died 
martyrs in that very prison. Out of seventy-three 
in the dungeons of Azeitao, thirty-one died from 
hardship. The Matador dos Padres earned his name 
in Europe as well as in the Xew World. 



POMBAL. 265 



In the endless lists of the martyrs are to be found 
three of PombaPs cousins, Christopher and John de 
Carvalho, who died in the dungeons of Azeitao, and 
Joachim de Carvalho, who died in the prison of Al- 
meida. There is one Albuquerque, four da Costas, one 
da Cunha, one Fonseca, one de Castro. The very in- 
complete list is in the Protestant de Murr's Journal.* 

If to these victims be added those who perished at 
sea, in the bottom of the ship's hold, and in other pris- 
ons, the number will exceed seven hundred, as stated 
by Father Oliveira in his memoir to Queen Maria.f 

Other Fathers, after the order of proscription, 
were cast into merchant-ships without provisions, 
to be abandoned on the Italian coast. More than 
two thousand of the Fathers are estimated to have 
been thus driven out from Portugal, Brazil and the 
other Portuguese colonies, and this was only because 
the prisons were too full to hold any more. 

Among those who remained captive was Father 
Moreira. The queen, Joseph's wife, humbled herself, 
it is said, so far as to beg, to shed tears in behalf of 
the unfortunate friend, who for so long a time had 
directed her conscience; but Pombal was absolute 
master. 



* Annee, 1780. f Journal de Murr, t. X, p. 149. 

23* 



266 JESUITS! 



Pope Clement XIII protested. Pombal shook 
the spectre of a schism, ready to break out in Por- 
tugal, before his eyes and the Pope was silent. In 
gratitude for his silence, Pombal insolently dismissed 
his ambassador, and confiscated the goods of the 
Jesuits. 

There are certain " imaginative writers " who, in 
telling this sad story, have made Pombal the victim 
and the Jesuits the executioners. When these last 
are concerned no falsehood need frighten. But the 
fact is, instead of striking, they did not even parry 
a blow. It can be said that the Jesuits in Portugal 
were defended only by the Holy See, which fought 
in a fatherly manner, but feebly. 

As for them their only strength was in dying. 



Among the Slayer of the Fathers' victims, the 
most illustrious was Gabriel Malagrida, whom Pom- 
bal, by an excess of irony and despite his generous 
ideas, delivered, to employ his own style, to the 
"faggots of the Inquisition," and who in fact was 
burnt at the stake on the 21st of September, 1761, 
in the square of the autos-da-fe of Lisbon, Of him 



POMBAL. 267 



Voltaire has said with real indignation, in his Si&cle 
de Louis XV: * " the culprit was burnt only for 
having been a fool," which is a calumny slipped in 
under the guise of pity. Malagrida was no more a 
fool than was Francis Xavier. To be sure a few 
lines above, in order to characterize Pombal's con- 
duct in this infamous affair, Voltaire had said : "An 
excess of the ridiculous and of the absurd was joined 
to an excess of the horrible," f but he might have 
scourged the assassin without insulting the martyr. 

This fool was one of the most glorious missiona- 
ries that Portugal had produced. He was seventy- 
three, and had passed forty years of his life in savage 
countries in leading souls to the happiness of God, 
and it was he who, in the reign of John V, replied 
to that prince's courtiers who wanted to know by 
what right he "troubled the peace" of the poor 
Indians with ideas of another world : " By the right 
which Jesus gave me in dying for them." 

If you think those courtiers rather old for their 
time, for the century had not reached forty, and they 
spoke like pupils of Raynal, I can only reply that 
courtiers have always been philosophers, just as phi- 
losophers have always been courtiers. Hardened by 

* Tome XXII des (Euvres, p. 35. f Ibid. 



268 JESUITS! 



the narrow petty task marked out for them by their 
selfishness, courtiers have always set down for fools 
all who busy themselves in others' affairs, not for 
their own behalf, but for the sake of the others 
themselves. 

This pagan wisdom looks upon everything, outside 
of interest, as excessive, immoral, and dangerous to 
the philosophical notion of liberty ; this wisdom, 
simpering its utilitarian platitudes, accuses charity 
of extravagance. 

For the "practical minds" of our time, Malagrida 
must have been a fool : may God grant us his folly ! 
God keep us from the proud reasoning of the mathe- 
maticians, who can reckon algebraically to a hair's 
breadth the distance of their small hearts from the 
sun, and yet cannot resolve the childish equation 
between the few sad hours of our human life and 
the incommensurable eternity. 

From his earliest years, Malagrida had been that 
sort of a fool. An adventurer of the faith, he had 
explored countries, where others make their fortunes, 
only to win poverty, and in the delirious atmosphere 
of the golden countries he had only taken the fever 
of charity. 

Forty years ! Are there many gold hunters who 
continue to delve the earth for forty years ? He had 



POMBAL. 269 



added to his treasury thousands of souls, and still 
the thirst of his sublime cupidity was unsatisfied. 
He had suffered all that a human creature could 
suffer; he had been hunted in the woods; the sav- 
ages had bound him to the torture-stake, and a hun- 
dred times he had entoned, with an ever deceived 
joy, the canticle of death. 

He had worked miracles like Francis Xavier, he 
had converted whole countries, and the odor of his 
sanctity had crossed the sea. His body was covered 
with so many wounds, that the men charged with 
disrobing him for the last suffering gave up attempt- 
ing to count the innumerable scars of the soldier of 
Jesus Christ. Yes, yes, we were wrong to dispute 
with Voltaire. Voltaire was right : this saint was 
a fool. This no practical mind will deny. 

In 1749, he was called by his superiors from the 
missions of America, because King John V, who 
was dying, asked for him. Pombal, who was then 
an ambitious but unsuccessful man, and was wrapped 
up in his own selfish projects, must have shrugged 
his shoulders at the old king's fancy in sending for 
this fool from afar. It is said he was jealous of the 
fool, and that it was then his implacable hate began. 
Would he have been able, however, to take the fool's 
place at the dying man's bed ? 



270 JESUITS! 



Pope Benedict XIV said, in speaking of John V's 
death and of the fool: "Happy the king who has had 
an apostle's hand to support him in his last step!" 

Malagrida went back to the desert in the very- 
hour that Joseph Emmanuel's accession called Pom- 
bal to power. 

Pombal was already minister some time when 
John V's widow declared her wish to die in the 
fool's arms. Joseph ordered the recall of Mala- 
grida, and Pombal was afraid, for his war against 
the Jesuits was already begun in the colonies, and 
the apostle, coming back from the missions, could 
bring fearful testimony in this matter. Pombal 
tried to prevent this return, failed, and the destruc- 
tion of the saintly old man was sworn. 

There is a fact vouched for by several historians : 
On different occasions, when Gabriel Malagrida's 
fearless zeal had brought him face to face with death, 
he who spoke of these things with the assurance of 
a prophet, said : " God has promised me that I shall 
not fall beneath infidel blows. I shall have the 
supreme happiness of the supreme ignominy. I shall 
end in a Christian country, surrounded by Chris- 
tians, who will applaud my agony." 

Pombal was aware of this prophecy. One day, 
when he was talking to his brother, Paul Mendoza 



POMBAL. 271 



Carvalho, the minister of his spoliations in Marag- 
non, he said, laughingly : " The reverend Father 
shall have what he desires." And he began that 
dark work that seems like the masterpiece of a 
demon, that long, patient and truly infernal effort, 
by which a saint, known for such throughout Chris- 
tendom, a real defender and propagator of the faith, 
a prophet, honored in his lifetime by the vene- 
ration of the Head of the Church, and endowed 
with all of heaven's precious gifts, was to be turned 
into a miserable creature shamefully fallen, a heretic, 
a regicide, an imposter, a corrupter, a vile and im- 
pure plaything of the brutal illusions and idiotic night- 
mares, which emanate from the spirit of darkness ! 

I repeat it, this was a demon's masterpiece. This 
was Pombal's masterpiece. 

Against common sense, Malagrida was at first 
implicated in the case of the Tavoras. This was 
merely a pretext for shutting him up in a dungeon. 

Once there, it matters little what abominable 
cruelties are inflicted upon him twenty feet under 
ground. During two years the unfortunate old man 
is the property of Pombal, much wiser than the 
Indians in all the modes of torture. 

But does he lose his reason under the atrocious 
weight of his torments? In the dark night that 



272 JESUITS! 



surrounds him like that of hell, do they play the 
game of apparitions, of phantoms, of devilish voices 
speaking in the depth of the shadow? Do those 
hateful cries resound, the inhuman awakening of the 
captive spirit, whose secret, it is said, the jailer of 
Louis XVIth's son discovered in the Temple? Do 
they, in a word, madden that great mind which had 
known the language of God ? And does God, for 
His own greater glory, permit the repulsive exagge- 
ration of that torture so that his servant, inoculated 
with the strange dementia, should write, he who was 
dying in complete darkness, with his paralyzed fingers, 
without pen, without paper, without ink, should 
write two immense volumes which give the lie to 
his faith, his life, his death, his entire self! 

The mind refuses to believe it. 

And where are those books : the Reign of Anti- 
christ and the Life of the Blessed Saint Anne, dictated 
by Jesus and His Holy Mother f No one has ever 
seen them. 

The titles are known and some absolutely extrava- 
gant extracts. 

Does not all this look like Pombal ? In all con- 
science, which is the easier, to believe in these two 
immense volumes, the work of a saint, and which do 
not exist, or to believe that the extracts were fabri- 



POMBAL. 273 



cated by the fabricator of so many fabricated pieces, 
and who pushed his boldness so far as once upon a 
time to fabricate a false brief of Clement XIII ? 

The extracts, however, were gotten up by a mas- 
ter-hand. One must needs have the talent of the 
pen to be compared to Richelieu, the founder of the 
French Academy. It was a superb piece of idiocy 
and of immorality. Some believed in the madness 
(spiritism had not been invented), others in the 
degradation. Throughout Portugal a sneer of dis- 
gust was giveu to the man whom all Portugal had 
nearly adored. No one partook of the insulting 
pity that was displayed by Choiseul and the Ency- 
clopaedia, and when Pombal produced his mass of 
stupid blasphemies before the tribunal of the Inqui- 
sition, all Portugal clapped its hands. 

The tribunal of the Inquisition, however, refused 
to pass judgment for it saw through the fraud. A 
brother of the king was Grand Inquisitor. 

Do you think Pombal hesitates? No, he is 
stronger than the king's brother, since his grip is on 
the king's throat. He cashiers the king's brother 

and in his place names who? Paul Mendoza 

Carvalho, his own worthy brother. But the new 
chief of the Holy Office needs pontifical institution. 
No matter : Pombal makes himself, confers institu- 
24 



274 JESUITS! 



tion and all moves as if on wheels. Was I right in 
telling you it was a masterpiece? 

" Strangled first, then burnt by the executioners' 
hand so that the tomb itself might not have his 
ashes!" Thus spoke the sentence of the fabricated 
inquisitors. Do you recognize PombaPs emphasis? 
" tomb," " ashes ! " He had great talents ! 

In the evening of the 21st of September, in the 
presence of all Lisbon solemnly called together, the 
aged, the illustrious, the holy apostle of the faith, 
his hands tightly pinioned, a gag in his mouth, sur- 
rounded by all the ridiculous and hideous figures of 
demons which Pombal, " too much inclined to the 
generous ideas of his age," had gathered in the vaults 
of the Inquisition in order to provoke hooting and 
insult, in a word, in all the equipage of the bloody 
comedies of the middle ages, exhumed by a philoso- 
pher, Gabriel Malagrida appeared upon the scaffold. 

How? with disordered hair and wandering eyes, 
no doubt, with the mien of the hatefully degraded 
and mentally deranged mau who had written the 
Reign of Antichrist f 

Not at all ! Accounts are plentiful and all estab- 
lish the venerable serenity of the condemned martyr. 
He had the modest and joyful air of one who was 
going to consummate the sacrifice that was to realize 



POMBAL. 275 



his prophecy or rather his passionate desire. At the 
moment of dying, he made an effort to bless the 
crowd, and his countenance was suffused with a 
light so heavenly, that the word " miracle " was 
murmured through the crowd, exalted by a reli- 
gious terror. 

His last words upon quitting the prison were, (the 
Jesuit!) to forgive his assassin. 

On listening to the account of his death, Clement 
XIII said : " He is a martyr at the feet of Jesus 
Christ." 

Voltaire, who was not strangled and was not a 
fool, is not reported to have felt that supernatural 
calm in his last moments. 

And Pombal? Pombal imprisoned the people 
who had uttered the word miracle, and remained ab- 
solute master of Lisbon, which the queen of France 
called the " city of dungeons." 

A few years afterward, on the 24th of February, 
1777, poor King Joseph died, and at once an im- 
mense cry arose against his minister. 

I draw no conclusion from that fact: popular 
clamors, in my opinion, prove nothing. 

Pombal was driven out of his place and the 
prisons opened, giving up the unfortunate innocent 
people who had been buried, languishing in agony 



276 JESUITS! 



in their underground tombs. The queen, Dona 
Maria, took no revenge on Pombal who had op- 
pressed her. She only desired for justice' sake that 
his political procedures might be reviewed. Most 
of them were declared unjust and, among others, 
the orders in the cases of Aveiro, the Tavoras, and 
Malagrida. As a result of this late and useless act 
of justice, condemned to numerous restitutions and 
pronounced a " criminal " by the very mouth of the 
queen, who certainly was merciful on this occasion, 
Pombal went into exile and died in the castle of his 
name. Despite his son's request, he refused the last 
sacraments. 

This man, endowed with remarkable faculties, who 
had been so powerful during a great part of his life 
and who died in obscure misfortune, had aroused 
hatred almost everywhere and especially in his native 
place. The inhabitants of the little town of Pombal 
were unwilling that his body should be buried in 
the church; the Marquis of Villanueva, minister of 
state, would not permit the mortal remains of his 
predecessor to be brought to Lisbon, where a pom- 
pous tomb awaited them, built by Pombal himself 
in the days of his power. The body was quietly 
put into a coffin, covered with a pall, and deposited 
in the convent of the Franciscans at Pombal. 



POMBAL. 277 



Events are patient in Portugal, as witness that 
sculpture in the square of Lisbon still showing 
Joseph 'Emmanuel's minister at his master's feet, 
after such a striking condemnation. Pombal's coffin 
remained for fifty years above the earth and literally 
without sepulture. 

Here comes in a curious fact on which we need 
bestow no long eulogies, for it is easy to forgive the 
dead. What was fine about it, however, was the dying 
Malagrida's prayer for the triumphant Pombal. 

The fact which I consider curious is this: In 
1829, at the time of the official return of the Jesuits 
to Portugal, Father Delvaux was charged with the 
reinstallation and was heartily assisted by the govern- 
ment and the people. He left Lisbon with a full 
escort and began his journey through the diocese of 
Coimbra. But let him speak for himself: 

" — Pombal," said he in his letter of report, " is 
the first town of the diocese of Coimbra, on the way 
from Lisbon. Now, the bishop had sent word to 
all the parishes that we were to pass through, to 
receive us in triumph, and, as a result of his letter, 
I had actually to tear myself away from the ovation 
to get to the convent of the Franciscans." (Let us 
not forget that Pombal's unburied body was there 
deposited.) " I made haste there, nevertheless : it 
24* 



278 JESUITS! 



was a need of ray heart. I celebrated mass there. 
I cannot describe the emotion I felt in offering the 
victim of propitiation, the Lamb who prays on the 
cross for his executioners, in offering it, I say, for 
the repose of the soul of Sebastian Carvalho, Mar- 
quis of Pombal, corpore prcesente ! * 

" For fifty years it had awaited in the passage the 
return from exile of that Company he had so harshly 
condemned, and whose return, besides, he himself 
predicted. 

" While I was satisfying this duty, this religious 
duty, the triumph which they forced us to accept, or 
rather endure, filled the whole town and its neigh- 
borhood. All the bells were ringing. The prior- 
archpriest came in procession to lead our Fathers 
to the church where everything was illuminated. 
It was like a dream. — " 

If, only, the sad remains of the once powerful 
man could have spoken ! I repeat that, in my 
opinion, greatness of soul was easy on that occasion, 
but I add that in turning over the history of this 
Company, so proverbially vindictive, according to 
the dictum of a certain class of literature, I find in 
this affair only the well characterized example of 
Jesuitical vengeance. 

* u The body being present." 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUCCI. 
A Simple Glance. 



I have given considerable importance to the Lis- 
bon drama, because the "Great Marquis," if not the 
most dangerous, was al least the most popular among 
the political enemies of the Company of Jesus ; just as 
for the average reader Pascal personifies the enemy 
of the Jesuits in polemics. 

I am indeed far from comparing all the political 
adversaries of the Company to Don Sebastian de 
Carvalho, the Slayer of the Fathers, and am still 
less ready to honor most of the slanderers who have 
vilified the Jesuits, by noticing their mediocrity, for 
they have not the lofty genius of Pascal, but it is 
certain that those two men, otherwise very different, 
had in common that persecuting hatred which St. 
Ignatius, in founding the Order, begged at God's 

279 



280 JESUITS! 



feet and obtained. It would be hard to say which 
of the two did the institute the more harm or the 
more good, since we cannot give the name of harm 
absolutely to what is the very essence of the work 
as well as the special grace attached to its crea- 
tion. 

Nevertheless, in studying the grouping of facts, it 
seems likely that Pombal's furious attack, which 
opened the breach for so many other attacks and 
apparently decided the battle, was merely an isolated 
blow, and that this minister of a small country was 
at the same time unaware of the great Protestant 
league's tactics, drawing all the kings to its help, 
and of the giddy plan of the Bourbon princes united 
in a family compact to shake off what they called 
the yoke of the Church. 

The fault was not altogether with these Bourbons; 
an almost irresistible movement drew them on ; we 
must charge it above all on their short-sighted sur- 
roundings, who could not see three steps ahead of 
them; on their courts, those swarms of buzzing noble 
flies; on their parliaments, clothed in false gravity, 
steeped in Jansenism ; on their ministers, who were 
half philosophers, and while dreaming of the wildest 
chimeras w r ere butting their heads against an im- 
pending ruin. 



GHOISEUL, D'ABANDA, TANUGCI. 281 



It is a remarkable thing that all those unfortunate 
kings agreed in reposing their confidence in ambi- 
tious men, without principles and without faith : 
Choiseul, Alba, d'Aranda, Tanucci, du Tillot, four 
examples of the same infidelity ! And there was 
an agreement too, between these pretended u great 
minds," who worked their own downfall with an 
activity, a haste, and a passion really worthy of 
pity! 

But may not as much be said of the Protestants 
themselves, and excepting a few who had the fore- 
sight and the malice of the demon, may we not 
equally reckon among the blind the entire host of 
philosophers and half-philosophers, the professional 
destroyers of the state, who at bottom are crazy 
devotees of class privileges once they have climbed 
a few rungs of the golden ladder? Is it possible to 
picture the disgust that would have been felt by 
Voltaire could he have seen, were it only in a 
dream, the bloody and filthy hands of the revolu- 
tion which was his offspring? 

No, none of those men understood the people. 
All played their poor game of an aimless disquiet, 
striving for the injury of those who were above 
them, heedless of those below, insulting those who 
sought to keep them in the right but detested way, 



282 JESUITS! 



indifferent to God, or mocking God, or hating God ; 
all of them ignorant, even the learned among them ; 
all tainted with the selfish leprosy of that age which 
laughingly accepted the end of the world, if only the 
end of the world would wait until the day after their 
death (and it came): all singing, sneering, railing, 
blaspheming, doubting or pretending to doubt, to be 
in the fashion, respecting nothing, not even their 
mothers, to so low a state had woman come and so 
empty had become the nuptial tie which is the human 
sanctity of the wife ! 

Never was there a time so barren or so careless of 
God, never an hour so plainly marked with the seal 
of agony and of final impenitence. 

For an instant I have regretted my inability to 
treat as it deserves the question whether the Jesuits, 
and above them the Church, would have done better 
had they resisted. But why should I ? The hand 
of Providence is everywhere visible there. The end 
of the century appeared like an undignified old age, 
broken by vice, infirm enough to excite disgust, and 
which is suddenly seized with a convulsion. It 
cries out in a trembling voice and then is silent. 
It has lived its life. 

Now let us hear the professors who compile ency- 
clopaedias. They say that this dead beast was " the 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUCCL 283 



old world." And they point out something that 
they fancy is rising in its place as the " new world." 

This is all very well in a figurative way, but be 
not taken by the puffed-up obesity of big words 
which do not contain sense enough to fill a cavity 
as small as a pin-head. Let these wind-bags fill 
themselves up with the emptiness of their words. 
They do less harm than might be thought, for with- 
out them there would be just as many good-natured 
simpletons who would concoct theories of their own 
to reduce all things to the compass of their preju- 
dices. Nothing died, nothing was born. The old 
world is still the world, so is the young. Both live 
through the same ages, and these burials and bap- 
tisms of worlds are merely pears to quench the 
thirst of the makers of phrases. 

There was a birth in Adam's time, and a baptism 
in Christ's, and between the two a deluge which will 
not come again. The most that can be said in this 
regard is that the world is undergoing crises for 
which there is one remedy : faith. 

There is the truth ; we are very old. Here is the 
question : 

Did the Eevolution revive faith? Perhaps so. 
Then blessed be the Revolution even in its deepest 
shame ! 



284 JESUITS! 



Did the Revolution lessen faith? Then may it 
be accursed even in its undoubted greatness ! 

But I do not believe that faith was lessened, and 
I have plentiful evidence of its progress. God is in- 
deed among us so unfortunate and humiliated, though 
we are, more than He was among our luckier fathers : 
God is more bitterly attacked among us, and He is 
better defended — since we must employ these in- 
appropriate expressions to designate the immortal 
battle of doubt against faith, and that great combat 
of the standards which the ecstasy of Ignatius saw 
in the mystic plain. 

God holds us in His hand. There is a movement 
in our lethargy aroused by His anger, which is as 
fertile as His mercy. 

It is the seedtime, and the master of the house is 
at work. As ever, part of the seed falls by the road- 
side and the birds are fed by it, part among the 
rocks, and is blown about by the wind ; part among 
thorns which choke the growing stalks, and finally, 
a part falls on good soil and will return a hundred 
fold. 

But see how the enemy, in an evil hour, comes to 

the good soil itself and treacherously sows tares 

among the wheat. 

* * * * * * * 



GHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGI. 285 



Do you suppose that since the time when M. de 
Choiseul's workmen sowed the beautiful fields of 
France with so abundant a crop of tares that for a 
season the harvest was choked and the people smit- 
ten with a sort of epilepsy ; do you suppose, I say, 
that the tares have continued to flourish in the soil 
where they were so treacherously planted ? Indeed, 
no. The tares have disappeared, especially the Jan- 
senistic tares which M. de Choiseul and his associ- 
ates were so tenderly careful to introduce. Aye, 
that evil invading plant, Jansenism, is dead. Illus- 
trious Jansenism, favored by the nobility, the clergy, 
parliaments, the middle classes, the government, has 
so utterly gone out of sight that the rising genera- 
tion is unable to get satisfactory information about 
it in the encyclopaedias. Who has ever seen a live 
Jansenist ? 

And yet this thing which died out within a cen- 
tury, leaving no trace, once upon a time enjoyed 
enough of unlucky power to derange great minds 
and stifle the beating of generous hearts. Hateful 
and blind instruments of Protestantism, which itself 
was hood-winked and following along an unknown 
road, the Jansenists, hating alike the Protestants 
and the philosophers, revived the coalition of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees, spoken of in the Gospel, 
25 



286 JESUITS! 



in order to overthrow the object of their implacable 
jealousy, the Company of Jesus. 

They were around the throne, they filled up the 
parliaments, they held the public offices, and their 
austerity did not keep them from knowing Armi- 
da\s isle, where that old enchantress, Pompadour, led 
the king's precocious decrepitude astray. Around 
that miserable woman, whose name we have too 
often pronounced, was formed the league, including 
the prime minister, the parliaments, the University 
and the Jansenists, one of whom, a man of severe 
virtue, Francois de Fitz-James, bishop of Soissons, 
was the first to demand the suppression of the Com- 
pany, though, at the same time, he made this strange 
reservation : " We willingly do the justice of acknow- 
edging that there is no order of the Church whose 
members are more regular and more austere in their 
manners." 

Pascal, at least, insulted them. 

But let us hear the Protestants. And first Schlos- 
ser, professor of history in the University of Heidel- 
berg: "The various courts of the house of Bourbon, 
not seeing that they were going to leave education in 
very different hands," (different from those which 
had previously held it,) " united against the Jesuits."* 

*Schlosser, t. I. 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUGGI. 287 



This blindness of royalty was heartily amusing to 
the philosophers. D'Alembert actually cried out for 
joy. Schlosser adds, in speaking of the Jansenists : 
" By means often equivocal they had destroyed the 
esteem enjoyed by the Jesuits." * 

And Schoell : " The Jansenists with a show of 
great religious zeal, and the philosophers, while talk- 
ing loudly of philanthophy, worked to upset the 
pontifical authority. But to overturn the ecclesias- 
tical power, it was necessary to isolate it by taking 
away the support of that phalanx which had ever 
been devoted to the defense of the pontifical throne." 
There is historical truth in these avowals. A few 
lines further on, Schoell says again : " The impru- 
dence of a few of its members furnished the arms 
for combating the Order, or, rather, to persecute an 
Order whose existence depended on that of the Catho- 
lic religion and of the throne, was considered as en- 
titling one to call himself a philosopher." 

There is German frankness. 

" In their hands were the future generations. 
Nothing hostile to the Holy See or to religion could 
succeed as long as the Jesuits were there. The 
Jesuits were unassailable in their faith. A con- 
spiracy was formed against them ; they were called 

* Cours d'histoire, t. XLIV, p 71. 



288 JESUITS! 



guilty because they refused to take part in the 
schemes that were enveloping the Holy See and the 
monarchies." * 

And, strange to say, monarchies put themselves at 
the head of the plot gotten up against their firmest 
defenders ! Quos vult perdere y says the poet in Jupi- 
ter's time. God takes the senses away from those 
whom Providence has condemned. Kings were at 
work preparing their suicide. 

Just as the dark news from Portugal was arousing 
public curiosity in Paris, amusing the court, stimu- 
lating the parliaments to a like procedure, and sug- 
gesting to M. de Choiseul the means of accomplishing 
his end without exactly reddening his delicate finger- 
nails in blood, there came the affair -of Father 
Lavalette. The matter was simple enough at first, 
but ended in catastrophies which, although certainly 
not brought about by the Company, were yet not 
treated with any energetic remedy. Father Lavalette 
was culpable as a religious, if not as a man. To 
meet losses which were not caused by the chances of 
honorable warfare, but by one of England's f many 



*Cretineau-Joly. Hist, de la Comp. de Jesus, t. V, p. 180. 

fSome writers have asserted that the seizure of Father 
Lavalette's vessels was a Protestant blow, but it was simply an 
English blow and was the result of old habit. Fides anglica 
mercurialis fides. 



CHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGL 289 



flagrant crimes against the law of nations, Father 
Lavalette first stretched the Rule and then went quite 
beyond it. He became a merchant and even a specu- 
lator. 

The proof exists that Father Visconti, the Gene- 
ral of the Company, from the first took the severest 
measures against him. Visitors charged with judging 
in the case and furnished with the most extensive 
powers set out at an opportune time but everything 
seems to have conspired to bar their passage : war, 
tempests, captivity, death. When Father de la 
Marche, the fifth or sixth visitor named for that pur- 
pose, arrived in the Antilles, with a safe-conduct 
from the British government, the trouble had 
already lasted seven years. Father de la Marche, 
assisted by the principal members of the Company 
dwelling at Martinique, gave the celebrated judg- 
ment condemning Lavalette to spiritual and tem- 
poral interdiction, and Lavalette acquiesced in the 
judgment, declaring, besides, that he had acted 
alone, without any authority or counsel from his 
superiors. 

This he reiterated in London after having been 
expelled from the Company, and he held to this 
statement in spite of many efforts made in the course 
of the trial to induce him to change it. 
25* 



290 JESUITS! 



Then Father de la Marche's judgment itself went 
a great way in destroying the credit of " Father 
Lavalette's banks," as they were called. The amount 
of operations, they were engaged in, were consider- 
able, while the closing of the depots by diminishing 
values and increasing the amount of useless material, 
widened the deficit to the proportions of a disaster. 

Still it was only a money ailment, which could be 
cured by money. The General's first impulse (it 
was a good one) was to pay all the creditors indis- 
criminately, although neither by its Constitutions 
nor in law was the Order responsible ; but members 
of the French bar counselled him to delay payment, 
and to have Father Lavalette's bankruptcy declared 
"so as to have a claim against the British govern- 
ment." 

Here we must acknowledge greater perfidy than 
even in the conduct of the English ; for several 
members of the parliament, when sounded, sup- 
ported this advice with great warmth. The trap 
was half-opened quietly. Mme. de Pompadour did 
not stir, M. de Choiseul pretended to be looking the 
other way, philosophy turned its back to laugh, and 
all Paris, taken up with an edict that was going to 
put seventy captains on the suspended list, sang a 
badly rhymed song which threatened, in the king's 



CHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGL 291 



name, to take his " Company " away from " Captain 
Jesus" too. 

The king was sleeping. 

One morning the parliamentary trap closed on a 
scrap of parchment, and at once an uncommon move- 
ment was known to be near. Mme. de Pompadour, 
M. le due de Choiseul, the philosophers, the Jan- 
senists, the parliament, the court, the city, stretched 
their neck to see who was going to be the first 
caught. 

It was but a trifle, and yet it was everything, and 
the king was three-quarters aroused by the joyful 
shout that went up around his throne, "The 
Jesuits" is in the Parliament. 



Under the pretext of judging the Lavalette affair, 
the parliament, carrying out a plan long ago arranged, 
ordered that a copy of the Constitutions of the Order 
should be brought to the desk. The king quite 
opened his eyes for an instant — but he at once fell 
asleep again. 

" Mme. de Pompadour above all things wished to 
win a reputation for energy, and she believed she 



292 JESUITS! 



had found the means by showing that she was able 
for a coup d'etat The Duke de Choiseul was influ- 
enced by the same smallness of mind. Moreover, 
they were both eager to turn away public attention 
from the events of the war."* That is Sismondi, 
and is not bad for a Genevan, especially as the events 
of the war which was bravely fought by our generals 
and our soldiers, but directed from Paris with the 
wildest folly, were such as could not be easily for- 
gotten. 

I cannot close the quotation, however, without 
repeating what Sismondi says about the undivided 
glory of the favorite and the minister: " They hoped 
to earn popularity by flattering at once the philoso- 
phers and the Jansenists, and to cover the expenses 
of the war by confiscating the goods of a very rich 
Order, and thus save being reduced to reforms, etc."f 

Would you rather see the good Lacretelle ? His 
text is almost identically the same : " The Duke de 
Choiseul," says he, in his Histoire de France pendant 
le XVIIl e siecle, "and the Marquise de Pompadour 
were stirring up hatred against the Jesuits. The 
Marquise, who had never been able to prove her 
claim to energy of character, was anxious, by de- 

* Histoire des Fran$ais } t. XXTX, p. 233. f Id. ibid. 



CHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGL 293 



stroying the Jesuits, to show that she understood a 
coup oVetat. M. de Choiseul was no less jealous of 
the same honor. The monks' goods would cover the 
expenses of the war and save the need of having 
recourse to reforms. The flattering at the same 
time of two powerful parties like the philosophers 
and the Jansenists, was a sure means of winning 
popularity. 

I hope no one will accuse me of serving up 
"clerical" prose to my readers! 

Neither the Calvinist Sismondi, nor Lacretelle, 
who was the declared enemy of all those whom he 
called " monks," in derison, was very eloquent, but 
it is impossible for two minds, whether ugly or 
beautiful, to coincide more exactly in their terms. 
As they were contemporaries, it is hard to say which 
one copied from the other. 

But let us hear M. de Choiseul himself. Louis 
XVI did not like M. de Choiseul, and once at least 
he showed the aversion he felt as an honest man and 
a Christian, in what may be called a terrible man- 
ner: but it was not regarding the Jesuits. A long 
while after the Lavalette case, when Louis XVI 
was king, M. de Choiseul wrote in his MSmoirejus- 

tificatif: " the king has been told that I was 

the author of the Jesuits' expulsion. *It was a mere 



294 JESUITS! 



chance that brought about that affair, and it was 

completed by what happened in Spain . At 

the end of a disastrous war, and overloaded with 
business, it was a matter of indifference to me 
whether a community of monks continued to exist, 
or were destroyed." 

"No man needs plead guilty to his own crime." 
Once the Constitutions were in the hands of the 
Parliament, it took no further care of Lavalette's 
creditors, " who were never completely paid," says 
Cretineau-Joly, " not even after the confiscation of the 
Society's goods." And the same author adds in a 
note.* "The Martinique house and the lands of 
Dominique, the personal property of Lavalette, 
were bought by the English conquerors for four 
millions." Why did not the Parliament make good 
the outstanding liabilities which amounted to no 
more than two millions, four hundred thousand 
livres f 

It was very fine to talk about the interests of the 
creditors! Lacretelle and Sismondi have already 
told us that this was only a pretext. To please the 
philosophers, it was necessary ecraser Vinfdme a little, 
and to please the Jansenistic Athenians, Aristides 

* Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, t. V. p. 204. 



CHOISEUL, D> AMANDA, TANUCCL 295 



must be exiled and "pay the expenses of the 
war!" 

The king stirred at last, although it was very late. 
He referred the matter to his council. The king's 
council gave an opinion favorable to the Jesuits, and 
the bishops of France, who were assembled at the 
king's request, replied unanimously (less six Jansen- 
istic votes), by a magnificent eulogium of the institute. 

But the king could not stay awake long; as soon 
as he had closed his eyes, Mme. de Pompadour 
gave a signal to M. de Choiseul, who repeated it to 
the Parliament, and on the 1st of April, 1762, all 
the Jesuit colleges were closed. 

D'Alembert gayly announced the matter thus 
"At the end of March, the sad news of the fall of 
this colony, (Martinique,) was received. But by way 
of a diversion, and to entertain the French people, 
just as formerly Alcibiades was ingenious enough to 
cut off his dog's tail, etc., etc."* In the height of 
his joy, he was a prophet, and he continued : "Every- 
thing looks rosy to me ! I can see the Jansenists 
dying an easy death next year, after having brought 
a violent death on the Jesuits this year." The Jan- 
senists are dead indeed, but forever, and the Jesuits 
still live. 

*D'Alembert, Destruction des Jesuites, p. 168. 



296 JESUITS! 



Nevertheless, all was not said yet. The clergy of 
France made its voice heard at the foot of the throne : 
" Sire,* to you religion recommends its defend- 
ers, the Church its ministers, Christian souls the 
holders of the secrets of their conscience, a great 
number of your subjects, the venerable masters who 
have educated them, the whole youth of your king- 
dom prays for those who form their minds and their 
hearts" These last words touched the main point 
of the question, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, 
who was charged with presenting the prayer of the 
clergy, showed its force. The Dauphin, a man of 
intelligence and of heart, left nothing undone to 
acquaint the king with the danger, the dreadful dan- 
ger of leaving the education of youth to chance, in 
times of such peril. It must be said that this dan- 
ger was then appreciated by every one; only, while 
it was an object of fear to the friends of the throne, 
it raised the hopes of the conspirators and of the 
still more numerous lot of reckless ones who were 
rushing headlong to the abyss into which civilization 
was to tumble. 

There was no name for the Revolution yet, but 
every one felt that it was coming, and every one felt, 

*Voeu du Clerge de France. 



GHOISEUL, &ABANDA, TANUGGL 297 



too, that by destroying the Jesuits the last check 
would be removed that kept the world from sliding 
down the declivity. To drive out the Jesuits was 
to give up the new generation to a chaos of hopes, 
of doubts, of falsehood, of unwholesome ignorance, 
of undisciplined science, of ambition, of treachery, 
of selfishness and of impiety which were uniting in 
what were called " the new ideas," with the stub- 
bornness of caste, the prejudice of sect, and the pas- 
sion of privilege peculiar to certain bodies, such as 
parliaments and Universities. 

The day will come when history, properly 
written and freed from the declamation that blurs 
it, will establish the clearness of this axiom ; 
that the Revolution, in its beginning, was only 
a fever of castes, a conspiracy of sects, and a 
revolt of privileged classes in which the people 
were for nothing. * * * * 

There was no need of the Revolution to help 
the progress of affairs, as far as that progress was 
possible under the divine permission. Beyond the 
measure of that permission, progress is false and 
ironical, as is clearly shown by the periodical and 
constant retreats of the Revolution which is still in 
existence and perhaps will never cease to be. Those 
who have lived long enough to understand events, 
26 



298 JESUITS! 



know that intelligent revolutionists do not believe in 
the Revolution. 

We should be still further along in the uncertain 
way called progress, and which is at least marked by- 
splendid trophies of material conquest and of physi- 
cal science, if the revolutionists were not so careful, 
from time to time, to assassinate Louis XVI, to play 
so many other mad tragedies, and to go out on the 
roofs and cry out that these are the idiots, or savages, 
to be dreaded or taken care of, and thus bring about 

the needed reaction. 

******* 

But what have they all, Voltaire among the rest, 
what have they been able to put in the place of 
God? There is something grand in steam, some- 
thing dazzling in the electric telegraph, and there is 
a fairy-like enchantment in the dark box where a 
play of the sunlight turns out photographs for a 
song. 

But is all that God ? 

Where is the really human invention? I repeat 
the word : where is the philosophical notion that we 
owe to the revolutionists? 

There is nothing ! In this respect they are poorer 
than the boldest of the heresies whose pitiable corpses 
strew the ditch along the high-road of Catholicity. 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUGGI. 299 



There were heresies that lasted for centuries, and 
there are some that still exist for the world's punish- 
ment, but as for these devotees of matter, these 
mathematical positivists, these seekers of the bino- 
mial that will take the place of God in their empty- 
church and of liberty in their slavish republic, as 
for these, there is nihil. 

Nothing, nothing ! All who have lived fifty years 
have seen a thousand of these frightful or ridiculous 
Utopias go by, have seen them unblushingly display 
their vapid obscenity, posting their placards, waving 
their banners, crying their disgusting wares, like 
Cheap-Johns at a fair, only to be pushed out of the 
way by the next equally senseless novelty. 

And what is at the bottom ? The shop. 

The shop of the nations who, not believing in 
the disinterestedness of the real apostle, become the 
apostles of all sorts of absurdities, in order to win 
reputation, influence, or money ; and this is a shop, 
too, of castes, of sects, of privileges ; this shop was 
patronized in the XVTIIth century, by the court of 
France, alas ! by Protestants, by the Jansenists, by 
the parliaments ! 

Have we a right to say that to oppose this con- 
temptible invasion of bourgeois charlatanism, which 
was then so new and yet so powerful, must we say 



300 JESUITS! 



that there was nothing able to oppose it but the 
Company of Jesus? Certainly not. The Com- 
pany of Jesus is only a battalion of the Church's 
great militia, and the Church holds its providential 
prowess independent of the Company of Jesus and 
of all that is not an essential part of the Church — 
but as we have spoken of an army with respect to 
the Church, we must not leave out an important 
element of every army : the soldier. 

In the Church's army there were possibly as good 
soldiers as the Companions of Jesus, there were none 
better, and their strength was enhanced by that 
wonderful discipline that was admired by their 
adversaries. On account of this discipline which 
massed them on the centre of the Church, they were 
as the heart of the Church, and the Church's ene- 
mies who were also massed, launched themselves 
against this heart. If the Church did not die, it 
was because it is immortal. 



Not only did the Church not die, it was not even 
shaken, but everything which was not the Church, 



CHOISEUL, WAR AN DA, TANUGGL 301 



and which lived through the Church, without know- 
ing it, and even denying, thrones, castes, parliaments, 
all—all trembled, fell ! 

The severest chastisement that can be inflicted on 
the memory not only of M. de Choiseul, whose par- 
tiality weighed so heavily on the conscience of the 
parliament, but on the parliament itself, is the full 
publication of the decree which expelled the Jesuits. 
Moliere's humorous genius could never have invented 
the enormous absurdity of the terms, which are an 
unequalled monument of bad faith, of ignorance, 
and of weakness. 

The parliament was an illustrious body, and if we 
use the word ignorance in relation to it, it is not 
because we are unaware that it contained juriscon- 
sults who were the greatest in France, and probably 
in Europe; but their voices were drowned in the 
clamor of the young courtiers, acknowledged crea- 
tures of that Pompadour whose pestilential influence 
penetrated everywhere, and besides, it is certain that 
Theology, suddenly dragged by the shoulders into 
the semi-pagan sanctuary of Themis, was ridiculously 
interpreted by the most astounding pedantry. The 
appearance of the petits-maitres of the salons, dis- 
guised as fathers of the councils, would suggest 
nothing but masqueraders in the carnival, had not 
26* 



302 JESUITS! 



the consequences of this masquerade been so dis- 
astrous. 

On the 6th of August, 1762, the parliament having 
decided this great case in one vacation, and having 
neglected or almost neglected the foundation of the 
case, gave a judgment which, by its very length, is 
proved to have been prepared in advance, and which 
declared: "The Society called the Company of Jesus, 
inadmissible in any polished state as being contrary 
to natural law, subversive of all authority, spiritual 
and temporal, and tending, under the specious veil 
of a religious institute, to introduce into the Church 
and into states, not an order which really and only 
aspires to evangelical perfection, but a political* body 
whose essence is a continual activity in order to 
obtain, by all sorts of ways, direct and indirect, 
secret and public, at first an absolute independence 
and then the usurpation of all authority." 

This is vague, though emphatic, and against 
common-sense, since the Order, subversive of all 
u spiritual" authority, was defended at once by the 
infallible testimony of the Holy See, the unanimous 



* At first the word " secret " was inserted, and the president 
Holland had compared the Jesuiis to the Freemasons who were 
causing some noise since Damiens' attempt. 



CHOISEUL, D> AMANDA, TANUGGL 303 



voice of the apostolic council, and by all the clergy 
of France with the bishops at their head. 

What follows is more useful, for it particularizes 
the misdeeds of which the Jesuits are accused : 
"Simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, witchcraft, 
astrology, irreligion of all kinds, idolatry and super- 
stition, immodesty, theft, parricide, homicide, suicide, 
and regicide." 

And all this not only practised but taught, with 
the approbation of their superiors and generals I 

Where was the Bearnais, who knew so well how 
to deal with the hypocrisy of parliaments ! If there 
had been, I do not say a Henry IV, but even the 
half, or only the smallest fraction of a king on the 
throne of France. Alas! it was only Louis XV, 
between Pompadour and Choiseul ! 

The Jews, says the Gospel, were at some pains in 
finding lying testimony against our Saviour. The 
parliament of Paris seems to have had some diffi- 
culty too in getting up its unequalled decree, for the 
same Holland, mentioned just now, when he properly 
attacked the Jansenists for having frittered away the 
succession of his uncle Rouille des Filletieres, in 
their austere goblets, bitterly complained that he 
" had spent more than sixty thousand livres of his own 
money in the affair of the Jesuits," and he added with 



304 JESUITS! 



not a little candor : " Truly the efforts I made with 
regard to the Jesuits, who would not have been 
snuffed out (delicate expression !) had I not devoted 
my time, my health, and my money, to the work, de- 
served better than the wasting of my uncle's estate ! " 

So it was especially to please the Jansenists! 
Well, it is true, and the unfortunate President had 
reason to mourn. 

What a shameful, pitiful comedy! The parlia- 
ment that had contained a d'Aguesseau, a Lamoig- 
non, a Mol6 ! Pombal at least would have shouldered 
the thing himself, and not have dishonored the justice 
of his country ! 

But let us go on with the pretended reasons for 
Choiseul's decree : we must read them to be able to 
believe in their existence. " Their doctrines have at 
all times been favorable to the schism of the Greeks ; 
subversive of the dogma of the procession of the Holy 
Ghost; favoring Arianism, Socinianism, Sabellian- 
ism, Nestorianism ; unsettling the certainty of all 
dogmas concerning the hierarchy, the sacrificial rites 
and the sacrament; overturning the authority of the 
Church and of the Apostolic See; favoring the 
Lutherans,* the Calvinists and other innovators of 

* Who would have thought it ? 



CHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGL 305 



the XVIth century; reproducing the heresy of 
Wickliffe ; renewing the errors of Tichonius, of Pela- 
gius, of the semi-Pelagians, of Cassian, of Faustus, 
of the Marcelluses; adding blasphemy to heresy; 
insulting to the holy Fathers, to the Apostles, to 
Abraham, to the Prophets, to St. John the Baptist, 
to the Angels; outraging and blaspheming the 
blessed Virgin Mary; unsettling the foundations 
of the Christian faith ; destructive of the divinity of 
Jesus Christ, attacking the mystery of the Redemp- 
tion ; favoring the impiety of deists ; flavored with 
Epicureanism ; teaching men to live as beasts, and 
Christians to live as pagans ; offending chaste ears ; 
nourishing concupiscence and leading to temptation 
and to the greatest sins; eluding the divine law by 
false sales, simulated societies and other artifices and 
frauds of that class; palliating usury; leading 
judges to prevarication; apt to foment diabolical 
artifices; troubling the peace of families; adding 
the art of deceit to the iniquity of theft ; shaking 
the fidelity of domestics; opening the way to the 
violation of all laws, whether civil, ecclesiastical or 
apostolic; offensive to sovereigns and to govern- 
ments, and making the life of man depend on vain 
reasonings and systems; excusing revenge and 
homicide; approving of cruelty and of personal 



306 JESUITS! 



revenge; contrary to the second commandment of 
charity, and stifling even in parents and children 
all feelings of humanity; execrable, contrary to 
filial love; opening the road to avarice and to 
cruelty; tending to produce homicides and un- 
heard-of parricides; openly opposed to the Deca- 
logue; protecting massacres; threatening magis- 
trates and human society with certain loss; contrary 
to the maxims of the Gospel, to the examples of 
Jesus Christ, to the teaching of the Apostles, to 
the opinion of the Fathers, to the decisions of the 
Church, to the certainty of life and honor of princes, 
their ministers, and their magistrates, to the repose 
of families, to the good order of civil society ; sedi- 
tious, contrary to natural law, to divine law, to 
positive law, and to the law of nations; smoothing 
the way to fanaticism and to horrible carnage; dis- 
turbing the society of men ; creating an ever present 
danger to the life of kings ; doctrines, whose poison 
is so fearful and so well attested by their sacrilegious 
effects that they cannot be viewed without horror." 
Phew ! ! I 

Never, certainly, have our most anti-Jesuitical 
journals concocted so pitiable a piece of pleasantry 
as that. Nothing equals the wonderful absurdity 
of the decree but its infamy. 



CHOISEUL, WAR AND A, TANUGGL 307 



But there was one thing more infamous than the 
decree itself, and that was the useless rigor employed 
in its execution. The king was as sad and dejected 
as he was capable of being. The Dauphin foresaw 
the unlucky future and died soon afterward. The 
accusations indulged in by the public against M. de 
Choiseul concerning that death have not been proved, 
but Horace Walpole wrote (October, 1765,): "The 
Dauphin has infallibly but a few days to live. The 
philosophers are full of joy." 

Lacretelle, on the contrary, bears witness to the 
great mourning that took place in Paris. The phi- 
losophers and the people knew how ardently the 
Dauphin was working for the reestablishment of the 
Jesuits, who were, in every sense of the word, popu- 
lar, and who were sustained, besides, by the queen, 
by Stanislas of Poland, and by the king himself, 
if the king counted for anything. The king had 
written to M. de Choiseul : " They have always been 
hated by all heresies." Choiseul knew modern his- 
tory too well to deny that, and certainly it was no 
reason why he should love them. 

Let us listen to a great voice, Lamennais, speaking 
at half a century's distance (1820): "They knew 
it," (the devotion of the Order to religion and to 
humanity,) he writes, " it was one reason for destroy- 



308 JESUITS! 



ing the Order, and it is one reason why we should 
pay it at least the tribute of our regret and our 
thankfulness, which it has earned by so many bene- 
fits. Aye, indeed, who could count them all? The 
immense vacuum in Christendom once filled by 
these men, as eager for sacrifice as are others for en- 
joyment, will be long apparent, and it will be long 
before it is filled. Who has taken their place in the 
pulpit? who shall take their place in our colleges? 
Who, in their stead will carry the faith and civiliza- 
tion, along with the love of the French name, to the 
forests of America or to the wide dominions of Asia, 
so often sprinkled with their blood ? They are ac- 
cused of ambition ; no doubt they were ambitious, 
and what body is not? Their ambition was to do 
good, all the good that lay within their means; and 
who does not know that it is this which men are 
often the least disposed to forgive. They desired 
to rule everywhere; and where did they rule, if 
not in those regions of the New World, where 
for the first and last time were realized under 
their influences dreams of happiness such as we 
can only pardon in the poet's imagination ? They 
were dangerous to sovereigns; is it decent for 
1 philosophy ' to make them such a reproach ? 
However it may be, I open history, I see accusa- 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUGCL 309 



tions, I look for the proofs and find only complete 
justification." 

This page, taken from Reflexions sur Vetat de 
VEglise de France au XVIII 6 siecle, preceded but 
a little the reestablishment of the Jesuits, which had 
actually taken place, but without having been sanc- 
tioned by the " eminently Christian " government of 
the Bourbons. At the Restoration, ChoiseuPs shadow 
again walked the corridors of the ministry. 

Thus all the doors of the administration were half- 
opened, to admit the turbulent bourgeoisie that called 
itself the Revolution in 1830. 



But let us go back again to the end of the XYIIIth 
century, to Spain, where ChoiseuPs shadow has fol- 
lowed us over the Pyrenees. Nothing could quench 
the thirst of hatred that was burning that man, and 
Sismondi, after being astonished at the speed with 
which the persecution of the Jesuits spread from 
country to country, explains it thus : " Choiseul * 

* Histoire des Fran^ais, t. XXIX, p. 369. 

27 



310 JESUITS! 



was carrying on this persecution on his own account, 
as a personal affair. Above all he persisted in driv- 
ing them out from all the states subject to the house 
of Bourbon." This was because Choiseul liked the 
Bourbons no better than the Jesuits. He was 
mining, he was sapping the throne as well as the 
altar. His rodent tooth could gnaw the gilded wood 
of the throne, but it grated against the stone of the 
altar. The throne needed the Jesuits, that is to say, 
education, and after the whole generation that fol- 
lowed the expulsion of the Jesuits had been poisoned, 
the throne tumbled down. 

The altar, which needs no support, remained 
standing, miraculously erect in the midst of the 
ruins. 

Choiseul, the principal workman at the humiliation 
of France, an impersonation of anti-Catholic rage, 
Choiseul, more injurious than Voltaire himself, and 
more culpable because he was at once more respon- 
sible and more interested, Choiseul labored in vain, 
non prcevaluU : his efforts brought about an unfore- 
seen disaster that terrified his last moments, but in 
his last moments he saw the lamp of the sanctuary 
still burning far above disaster, and the altar glori- 
fying God by the incense that rose from it with the 
prayers of the martyrs. 



CHOISEUL, D> AMANDA, TANUGGL 311 



Non prcevaluit : he had done nothing. Non prce- 
valebunt: they shall do nothing. Nothing can pre- 
vail against the Church, which is the rock of Jesus 
Christ ! 

In the singular memoir which M. de Choiseul, 
disturbed, but not at all repentant, in the following 
reign addressed to Louis XVI, and which we have 
already quoted in part, he accuses " what had hap- 
pened in Spain" of having alone determined the fall 
of the Company in France. Besides the fact that 
dates contradict this childlike and unstatesmanlike 
justification of a man whose career was filled with 
the ruin and desolation he had brought upon his 
country,* M. de ChoiseuPs statement is upset by the 
facts. Not only was the conduct of the French min- 
ister not determined by "what had happened in 
Spain," but it has been proved that the French 



* The history of this minister, as given in the encyclopaedias, 
is a masterpiece of the kind. There is displayed a man of good 
education (which is not a lie), endowed with talents (which is 
true), a friend of letters (he wrote many to foreign parts), a 
skilful administrator (like the famous steward who sold his 
master's castle), and enquiring young men are sent away 
without the information that this honorable man, this M. de 
Choiseul who expelled the Jesuits, had largely added to Eng- 
land's colonial fortune, served Austria without hurting Prussia, 
fattened Pompadour, betrayed Canada, lost India, ceded Lou- 
isiana, starved France, etc. 



312 JESUITS! 



minister, if not the author, was at all events the 
instigator of what had happened in Spain. 

In fact, Charles III in nowise resembled either 
Joseph Emmanuel or Louis XVI : he was a man, 
a king, even a Christian, and we remember that far 
from being an enemy of the Jesuits in system, he 
had had PombaPs first pamphlets against the Com- 
pany ignominiously burned. It needed a craftily 
laid scheme to drive such a prince to an excess of 
most furious persecution against that very Company : 
to manage the intrigue, what is popularly known in 
our theatres as the " villain " was needed, a man 
"endowed with talents," like Goethe's Mephis- 
topheles. 

The villain entered. 

Here historical facts are so colored that impar- 
tiality can be depended on only by having recourse 
to non-Catholic pens. The least phrase quoted from 
a writer friendly to religion would be suspected. 
Let this recital be written, then, from one end to 
the other by Protestant ink. 

In Madrid, in the year 1766, more than three years 
after France had struck the "ci-devant Jesuits," 
as they were called by the parliament, there took 
place a rather savage disturbance, known as the 
" hat " riot {sombreros,) It is unnecessary to exam- 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUGGL 313 



ine the seeming and trivial cause of the broil whose 
secret origin was at Lisbon and in Paris. For a 
moment the royal authority was set at naught, and 
Charles III, barely protected by his Walloon guards, 
had perforce to retire to Aranjuez. The Jesuits, 
still more popular in Spain than in France, and en- 
joying the public gratitude, quieted the riot which 
neither the Flemish regiment nor the guard had 
been able to put down. Unhappily, the reconciled 
mob accompanied them to their houses in triumph, 
crying, " Long live the Fathers." 

Charles III had some good qualities, but he had 
all the pride, jealousy and spite of a Castilian. He 
had fled ; the Fathers had controlled the people who 
had put him to flight. In the height of his anger, 
word reached him from Paris that " the Jesuits had 
less trouble in putting down the riot than they had 
in exciting it." 

Long before this, M. de Choiseul had won Charles 
Ill's good will by according his ambassadors the 
precedence of the ambassadors of France. What 
belonged to France was always cheap for M. de 
Choiseul, who was as lavish of our honor, as of our 
finances. 

After the affair of the Sombreros, a ministry 
friendly to M. de Choiseul (and, above all, to the 
27* 



314 JESUITS! 



Encyclopaedia,) was established at Aranjuez itself. 
The chief of this cabinet was a distinguished diplo- 
matist, Don Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda, 
whom the Lutheran, Schoell, represents as made a 
fool of by the exaggerated praises of infidel Paris. 
His colleague, the Duke of Alba, was a real veteran 
of philosophy and unscrupulous as to the means he 
used in striking the infdme, for another Protestant, 
Christopher de Murr, shows him to us * fabricating 
false letters which he charged on the Jesuits. 

Beginning with Pombal, all the Company's per- 
secutors were of like morals, as we shall establish 
heretically. According to C. de Murr, the Duke of 
Alba, on repenting, gave Charles III a written 
declaration of the falsehoods he perpetrated in the 
affair of the Jesuits. Besides, he declared before 
the Bishop of Salamanca, the Grand Inquisitor, that 
he had fomented the riot of the Sombreros on purpose 
to impute it to the Jesuits, 

Here we are, then, among an absolutely unclean 
lot, though these Spanish philosophers, far from 
being, like ours, of the common people, had more 
quarterings than they could find room for on their 
escutcheons. 

* Tome IX du Journal, p. 222. 



GHOISEUL, D'ABANDA, TANUGGL 315 



But something more than the Madrid riot was 
needed to destroy the sympathy of a fervent Catholic 
like Charles III, for the Company of Jesus. A 
third Protestant, the English historian Coxe,* de- 
scribes a romantic movement which brings M. de 
Choiseul on the stage again : u In 1764, the French 
ministry undertook, to complete the downfall of the 
Jesuits in other countries, especially in Spain. — 
Choiseul charged them with every fault that could 
be disgraceful to their Order. He did not scruple 
to circulate apocryphal letters under the name of 
their General and other superiors, and to spread 
odious calumnies against some individuals of the 
society." 

These calumnies, indeed, were rather against the 
king and against his mother, Elizabeth Farnese, the 
wife of Philip V. They remind us of the letter 
under the name of Ricci, General of the Company, 
fabricated by the Duke of Alba. The intrigue was 
well laid, and Coxe, misplacing the responsibility, 
charges M. de Choiseul with having impugned the 
legitimate birth of Charles III, by Father Ricci's 
pretended correspondence. 



*L'Espagne sous les rois de la maison de Bourbon, tome V. 
page 4. 



316 JESUITS! 



I believe the fictitious character of these letters 
has been denied by no historian, whether friendly 
to the Jesuits or not. But, one Protestant accuses 
the Duke of Alba of their fabrication, and another, 
the French minister. The matter is hardly worth 
examination. 

Coxe speaks of another forged letter in the name 
of the Father General : * "A letter was fabricated, 
supposed to be written to the Spanish provincial 
from Rome. This letter ordered him to stir up 
insurrections ; it was sent in such a way as to be 
intercepted;^ it spoke of the great riches and prop- 
erty of the Order ; it was a bait for its abolition. 
But the principal cause of their expulsion (the 
Jesuits) was the success of the means used to make 
the king believe them to have been the authors of 
the Madrid riot, and that they were fomenting other 
machinations against his family and his person. 
Charles from a zealous protector, became their im- 
placable enemy — he hastened to follow the French 
government, and drove the dangerous society from 
his States." 



* Ibid, p. 9. 

f All these ancient devices are known to the " liberals' 

Jesuitical ! 



CHOISEUL, &ABANDA, TANUGGI. 317 



Thus, ashamed of having fled, ashamed of having 
been helped, ashamed to see his birth taxed with ille- 
gitimacy, the haughty son of Philip V was pricked 
like a bull on all sides ; the picador es of Paris and 
Madrid who were harassing him understood their 
work. The apocryphal letters might just as well 
have been dispensed with, his wounded vanity was 
all that was necessary. 

A fourth Protestant, Ranke,* adds, however: 
" Charles III was made to believe that the Jesuits 
desired to replace him by his brother Don Luiz," 
just as the Jesuits desired to replace Joseph by Dom 
Pedro in Portugal ; when one sort of perfidy works 
well, why change it ? 

A fifth Protestant, Sismondi,f goes further: "Ru- 
mors of plots and of calumnious accusations, as well 
as apocryphal letters, which were intercepted as was 
intended, succeeded in deciding the king." 

Finally, a sixth, the Englishman Adams, although 
apparently unwilling to wound propriety (English 
propriety), believes that the crimes and evil inten- 
tions attributed to the Jesuits are doubtful, and he 
declares it " more natural J to believe that a party 



* Histoire de la papaute, IV, 494. 
f Histoire des Fran$ais, XXIX, 370. 
% Histoire d'Espagne, t. IV, p. 271. 



318 JESUITS! 



hostile, not only to their establishment, but even to 
the Christian religion in general, brought on a ruin 
in which governments took part all the more wil- 
lingly that they saw it to be for their interest." Let 
us stop at these half-dozen Protestant witnesses; 
but there are more. 

Pombal, with his natural boldness, had usurped 
the hand of justice and had constituted himself a 
magistrate; Choiseul, who was a better comedian, 
stood concealed in the wings where he could reg- 
ulate the exits and entrances of his parliaments on 
the judicial boards of Paris and of the provinces. 
The Count of Aranda was not so deliberate. A few 
lines signed, " I, the king," and all was said. 

With this letter of change, obtained through the 
error of a king who was driven mad by the thirst 
for vengeance, the Spanish minister went to work 
and surpassed M. de Choiseul in great and petty 
cruelty. There was a manifest emulation. The 
hidalgo wanted to rival the nobleman, and to show 
the gentlemen of the Encyclopaedia that Ignatius 
Loyola's own country, when chemically treated with 
" liberal ideas," could go to the same excesses as the 
land of Vincent de Paul drugged with philanthropy ! 

And the Count of Aranda had not presumed too 
far on his own merits. He displayed the valor of 



CHOISEUL, D'ARANDA, TANUGGL 319 



the Cid, in that campaign of persecution against 
unarmed religious, who ardently prayed for their 
executioners.* Omitting the wheel, the gallows, 
and the faggot, which were more in the line of 
PombaPs talents, Spain pushed philosophy to the 
furthest and most revolting limits, and in one day 
cast six thousand priests into the holds of vessels, 
most of which were condemned and out of use, and 
which shipped water in every seam. Some of the 
hulks had to be discharged again because they threat- 
ened to sink before even spreading a sail. 

As in Portugal and in France, fine promises were 
made to the members of the Company in case they 
would abjure their vows. Is it necessary to say that 
these promises were in vain ? Out of six thousand 
religious in the peninsula and the colonies there were 
barely a few, and their very small number astonishes 
the Protestant writers we have quoted. 

We shall not speak of the victims' patience, nor 
of their tormentors' useless harshness. What good 
would it do to describe it? They each did their 
best, but we must say that the indemnity allowed 
to the Spanish Jesuits by Spain, which confiscated 
the immense wealth of the poor, was at least not so 

* Jesuits ! ! ! 



320 JESUITS! 



ridiculous as the alms thrown to the French Jesuits 
by ChoiseuPs parliaments. Each Spanish Father 
received one hundred dollars a year in place of the 
twenty, eighteen and twelve sous a day allowed to 
the Fathers with us, where the treasury was benefitted 
to the extent of more than sixty millions. After all, 
however, no one was robbed but the poor. 

Pope Clement XIII, who loved Charles III, de- 
fended the Jesuits here as he had done in France 
and in Portugal, but with the like ill success. 



Ferdinand IV, the Bourbon of Naples, of course 
had a philosopher for minister. Bernard, Marquis 
of Tanucci, had been a factotum to Charles III 
when this last was king of Naples. When Charles 
III put on the Spanish crown and gave up the Nea- 
politan one to his brother Ferdinand, Tanucci con- 
tinued as factotum to Ferdinand. The encyclopaedias 
mention him as one of the most determined enemies 
of the Church, and therefore worthy of consideration. 
Tanucci, having dictated his little " I, the king," to 
Ferdinand, still hardly more than a child, was for a 
moment thought well of in the good circles of Paris, 



CHOISEUL, D 1 AMANDA, TANUGGL 321 



and was compared to Pombal himself for the excel- 
lence of his brutality to the Fathers whom he drove 
out in a soldierlike manner. 

There was, besides the one at Naples, still another 
little Bourbon, the Duke of Parma, who, like every 
one else, had his minister, marquis, and philosopher, 
Du Tillot, Lord of Felino. 

This uncommonly obscure statesman has no other 
glory whatever than that of having driven out the 
Jesuits of Parma. That is enough. The encyclo- 
paedias set down his name, thankful for the grain of 
sand which he contributed to the revolutionary heap. 
He was the cube- root of Choiseul. 

From the depth of their honorable misfortune, 
the descendants of the most illustrious royal race 
in the world, when they study the past so as the 
better to know the future, curse the names of these 
great and small traitors who brought more evil upon 
nations even than upon kings. 

All was done: the Jesuits' only asylum was in Rome. 

Then all those ministers of deceived, sleeping or 
hoodwinked Bourbons, Choiseul, d'Aranda, Tanucci, 
Felino, in complicity with Pombal, held the knife 
at the Pope's throat. That is not too strong an ex- 
pression : did you suppose that Louis XVIth's mar- 
tyrdom was not an expiation ? 
28 



322 JESUITS! 



The Pope, an heroic and saintly old man, resisted, 
but he died because the measure of the bitterness 
that shortened his days was full. 

He died, and with his last look, full of prophetic 
sadness, saw the degenerate children of St. Louis 
trembling on their Catholic thrones. 

And Lorenzo Ganganelli, elected Sovereign Pon- 
tiff, tore up the bull of Paul III. 

The Society of Jesus fell without offering any 
complaint, dying, as it had lived, in absolute 
obedience. 



This is perhaps the greatest and finest page in the 
Company's history. I might say that I reserve it 
for my other more extensive and complete book, but 
that would be a falsehood : it is a page I shall never 
write. 

In fact, my respect for the chair of St. Peter is 
boundless. 



A LAST WORD. 



At the opening of his great and excellent work, 
brimming with facts, Cr6tineau-Joly, like a witness 
in court, declares himself nor friend, nor admirer, 
nor adversary of the Jesuits. The Jesuits are for him 
what Vitellius, Otho and Galba were for Tacitus. 

At the end of my hasty and incomplete little book, 
I declare, on the contrary, that I admire the Jesuits 
and love them. It is not necessary to be indifferent 
in order to be impartial, and far above the neutral 
virtue of impartiality stands the mistress — Truth. 

I have spoken the truth : the truth which by the 
sovereign law of justice obliges us to scourge perse- 
cuting evil and avenge persecuted good. It is need- 
less for a Christian to prove that he has no human 
interest in lying: his interest is God's law which 
has said, " Thou shalt not lie," and all human inter- 
ests united could not excuse the transgression of 
that law. 

It is good and wise to unfurl our standard. Frank- 
ness is the highest of abilities. I add, that to unfurl 

323 



324 JESUITS! 



our standard, loyally to display our colors, is the 
•very condition of impartiality. By saying, I love 
the Jesuits and condemn their enemies, I show the 
sincerity of my heart, and I take away everything 
which might obscure the meaning of my opinions. 

And by so doing, I am driven to a solid founda- 
tion for my verdict. 

In this book I have principally desired, after 
making a rapid outline of the Jesuits' luminous 
work, to sketch the dark and crooked labors of their 
enemies; I have desired to show to what an extraor- 
dinary degree the people who have turned the word 
Jesuit into a symbol of insult, were themselves the 
exact and striking counterpart of the monstrously 
disloyal creature that they called a Jesuit. This is 
an original side of the case. 

Protestant writers have shown the philosophical 
or Jansenistic Tartuffe lavishly making use of every 
rascality, every trick, every infamy, that he had laid 
to the charge of Loyola's posterity. 

Pombal is a tigrish Tartuffe, not limned by Mo- 
liere; but M. de Choiseul who seeks to involve the 
Jesuits in Pompadour's case of conscience, is a white- 
handed bravo, who can handle Elmira's robe without 
leaving red finger-marks; he belongs to comedy, 
and his nearest approach to melodrama is the chop- 
ping off the head of Lally-Tolendal. 



A LAST WORD. 325 



During the rest of the week he chops off the tail 
of Alcibiades' dog, to amuse the Athenians, while 
he ruins and dishonors Athens by the torture of 
them who had brought her glory and riches. 

He is indeed the original of the Tartuffe described 
in the encyclopaedias and is naturally an enemy of 
the Jesuits. He has looked into his conscience, as 
into a mirror, and having seen no more complete a 
piece of hypocrisy in the world than himself, has had 
a mask made in his own likeness and underneath has 
written Jesuit ! 

And it was not for Socinianism that the Jesuits 
were driven out, nor for Arianism, nor for Sabel- 
lianism, nor on account of Tichonius, whose won- 
derful name set Paris laughing at the Parliament's 
decree, nor even on account of St. John the Baptist, 
nor of Abraham ; the Jesuits were driven out because 
it was necessary for Choiseul and Pompadour — Mr. 
and Mrs. Tartuffe— to play their farce and thus 
gratify their contemptible little malice, and at the 
same time magically get away with a few millions. 

Are these things any the less true for being said 
by a man who hides not his contempt for the vile 
comedians, who slander their victims, nor his admi- 
ration of the saints who pray God for the salvation 
of their executioners ? 
28* 



326 JESUITS! 



There was a sudden recoil ; when the Jesuits were 
gone a wide void was seen, but principally in preach- 
ing and in education. 

This disaster was felt throughout the earth and 
for years. An exclamation of surprise and of sorrow 
is heard not only in Christian literature but in philo- 
sophical works and in the writing of universities. 
Chateaubriand agrees in sentiment with Fontanes, 
Joubert talks of it in the same strain as De Maistre, 
Lamennais as Voltaire, and Frederick of Prussia as 
Lally-Tolendal. 

" It is an irreparable loss to learned Europe ! " 
That is the declaration, the complaint of the intel- 
lectual world. Ah ! but this is far, very far from 
the accusations of " ignorantism," of " obscurantism ! " 

"Among them," says Voltaire, "were writers of 
rare merit, men of learning, orators, geniuses." * 
" The Jesuits/' added D'Alembert, " have won suc- 
cess in all kinds of learning: eloquence, history, 
antiquities, geometry, literature, grave as well as 
agreeable; there is hardly any class of writing in 
which they have not had men of the first merit." f 



* Dictionnaire philosophique, word Jesuites. 

f Destruction des Jcsuites, p. 36, 37. 1 1 is true D'Alembert 
adds (same work, p. 207) this remarkable acknowledgment: 
"The Jesuits were regular troops assembled and disciplined 
under the standard of 'superstition.' They were the Aiacedo- 



A LAST WORD. 327 



Frederick II, writing to Voltaire that " this order 
had furnished France with men of the greatest 
genius," declared that he wished to " preserve some 
of its precious stock so as to be able to supply those 
who might desire to cultivate so rare a plant." * 

Lalande was not sparing in his eulogium of the 
Jesuits ; he charged their enemies with " having de- 
stroyed a society which presented the most astonishing 
reunion ever seen of science and of virtue." 

"Carvalho (Pombal) and Choiseul," added he, 
u have destroyed the finest work of man, to which 
no sublunary establishment will ever approach, the 
eternal object of my admiration, my gratitude, and 
my regret." He declared that he " had once upon 
a time had a desire of entering that Order, and re- 
gretted not having followed a vocation which" he 
" owed to innocence and a taste for study." f 

nian phalanx which it behooved Keason to see broken and 
destroyed The Jansenists are but Pandours whom Keason 

WILL HAVE BUT LITTLE TROUBLE IN OVERCOMING, WHEN 

they are alone." The Jesuits driven out by them and 
drawing them down in their own fall, can address their father, 
St. Ignatius, in this prayer: "Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do." Thus philosophy was decorating 
their good friends, the Jansenists' tomb in advance with these 
flowers of mockery, and this after they had pulled the philoso- 
pher's chestnuts out of the fire. 

* (Euvres de Voltaire, t. LXXXVI, p 286 

^Journal des Debats, 3 Fevrier, 1799 : quoted by De Maistre, 
Considerations sur la France, appendice, p. 164. 



328 JESUITS! 



And Lally-Tolendal : " — The destruction of the 

Jesuits was the most arbitrary and the most 

tyrannical act that could be performed ; it resulted 
in the disorder that follows injustice, and an incu- 
rable wound was inflicted on public instruction." * 

A collection of these severe judgments against the 
murderers of the Order could be displayed here, the 
judgments of men of the most diverse opinions, 
signed by names the most various in their celebrity, 
and a collection as well of the most emphatic praise 
given to the labors of the institute. 

There would be found Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
Lamartine, Diderot, Talleyrand, Silvio Pellico, Jean 
de Muller, Macaulay who has written eloquent pages 
on this subject, Chaptal, Fontanes, Dumouriez, but 
why name them ? This collecting of phrases is a 
tiresome and unfamiliar trade to me; the awkward 
use which I should make of so many citations would 
weary my reader's patience. I shall transcribe only 
these lines of Kern, the Gottingen professor, thus 
ending a sort of concordance of Protestant judg- 
ments on the Company : " The greatest mrnds and 
the noblest hearts have at all times shown themselves 
.favorable to the Jesuits. Thus Frederick the Great, 
when asked for their expulsion, replied : 'I know no 

*Mercure du 3 Janvier, 1806. 



A LAST WORD. 329 



better teachers for my Catholic subjects.'. . . . Cath- 
erine, Francis Bacon, Hugo Grotius, Pierre Bayle, 
Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, Ranke, Beckedorf, have 
all declared in favor of the Jesuits, while the vilest 
minds and hearts have always cruelly attacked 
them." * 

In Germany, Kern is one of the lights of edu- 
cation. 



But the mourning caused by the news of their 
destruction is nothing to the great trouble which it 
brought to consciences and which went far in hast- 
ening the downfall of kings, Ignatius Loyola had 
created the Order in the XVIth century with the 
special and openly announced end of opposing im- 
minent revolution, and, in fact, the Revolution had 
fallen back before the new Order. 

It is not I that say that, but the Revolution, 
or Revolutions rather : from the one that broke out 
under Luther to the one that ended with Marat. No 
partisan of the Jesuits has ever held them of an im- 
portance ascribed to them by their enemies, not only 
in the past, but also, and above all, in our own day. 

* Widerlegung der langitchen Behauptung einer gezetzl. 
Sunde. — Anbefehlungunter den Jesuiten, 1824. 



330 JESUITS! 



What! now? Is it possible that they are not 
dead, after being so effectually slain by the axe, by 
the wheel, by exile, by famine, by the use of all the 
various tortures known before their time or invented 
expressly for their extermination? Are they like 
those tropical trees that become thick forests as soon 
as they are cut down ? Have they the gift of im- 
mortality ? 

Their downfall shook the world and dug an abyss. 
At their funeral there went up a concert of wailing 
and of applause that resounded in both hemispheres, 
and yet when I pick up any daily paper, a descend- 
ant of the philosophical gazettes, I see that nothing 
has changed, that they are still there, that they are 
still enslaving families by their hateful power, that 
they are oppressing the clergy, that they are ruling 
at Rome, threatening Prussia, magnetizing Turkey, 
and that they find time by their really infernal 
trickery to bring about wonderfully dramatic mar- 
riages between all the mysterious young heiresses 
of mysterious millions and all the former Papal 
Zouaves ! 

They have a few more colleges than formerly, and 
in their colleges a few more pupils. And, as Henry 
IV said, those pupils belong to them : you may exile 
them to America, those pupils will follow them ! 

It is fascination, witchcraft, and we can fairly say 



A LAST WORD. 331 



that the more these honest newspapers foolishly at- 
tempt to proscribe, to i-eason, to howl, the more 
obstinate will the fathers of families become in 
their choice. 

And I solemnly declare that if the honorable gen- 
tlemen of the penny journals should some day found 
a college, (and why not ?) in order to avoid their 
teaching, I would willingly send my children to the 
Jesuits at Timbuctoo ! 

There is a goodly number of us, poor fathers, in 
France, who are of that mind. There is no disputing 
about tastes. 

What, then, profited all those malodorous enormi- 
ties, the collaboration of Choiseul and Pompadour, 
the league of pious Jansenists and philosophical 
atheists, poor President Holland and company's loss 
of money, the cruel and outrageously comical decree 
of the Parliament, M. de la Chalotais's toothpick, — 
and PombaFs wild atrocity, and D'Aranda's great " I, 
the King," and Tanucci's little " I, the King/' and 
Felino's microscopic " I, the Duke," and so many 
impure intrigues and so many cowardly barbarities? 

Nothing. 

Is not that perhaps the reason why the Jesuits 
never lift their pen in self-defense ? They die, and 
what matters it to them? The greater glory of God 
survives. 



332 JESUITS! 



Their defense is not with themselves, it is with 
all who are unwilling to see a renewal of those dis- 
asters which the fall of the Jesuits always precedes 
and announces. They have been made to bear the 
weight of the cross. That is their happiness and 
their honor. When the riches which they have ac- 
cumulated for the patriotic works of instruction and 
alms-deeds are taken away from them, when they are 
deprived of their wealth, their famous wealth, which 
belongs not to them but to labor, to civilization, to 
evangelization, to education, of their wealth which 
they themselves never need, rich as they are in their 
vow of poverty, when all has been taken away they 
toil in misery and are the more blessed. 

But then their toil profits us the less — and whose 
is the fault? 

Their gain is ever the same; God does not change 
the price of a day's work. 

The day will come when those who are called con- 
servatives, to whatever party they may belong, who 
are all so well agreed in their eagerness to have their 
children educated by the Jesuits, the day will come 
when these men will understand that the Jesuits' 
wealth is their wealth, and their children's wealth, 
that the existence and the liberty of the Jesuits are 
their children's education and future : that is to say, 
the future and the morality of a considerable part 



A LAST WORD. 333 



of France. When conservatives understand that, 
perhaps they will defend those who are not allowed 
to defend themselves. 



On the 7th of August, 1814, Pius VII reestab- 
lished the Company of Jesus throughout the uni- 
verse. The Company of Jesus obeyed that command 
which told it, as Jesus had told Lazarus, Arise and 
walk! 

But did it come out of a tomb ? Not at all. The 
Order was dead in the fulness of its obedience, but 
the members of the Order were alive and we have 
striking testimony of it in history. In the year 
1775, a year after the death of the unhappy king, 
who had M. de Choiseul for a minister, in the face 
of all Paris, the University, the Parliament, and 
philosophy, Father Beauregard " a Jesuit," went up 
into the pulpit of Notre Dame, and we shall see that 
he had the voice of a living man ! He spoke, or 
rather prophesied, thus : " It is against the king, it 
is against religion that the philosophers are arrayed. 
The axe and the hammer are in their hands. . . Your 
temples, O Lord, will be stripped and destroyed, 
your solemn feasts abolished, your name blasphemed, 
29 



334 JESUITS! 



your worship proscribed. To the psalms of praise 
that were wont to be heard in these sacred aisles, 
succeeds the song of the lascivious and the infa- 
mous. . . . And thou, obscene divinity of paganism, 
thou comest even here to take the place of the Eternal 
God, to sit in the throne of the Holy of Holies and 
receive the perjured incense of thy blind adorers!" 

Was it possible, eighteen years before the time, 
more clearly to announce the accession of the Goddess 
of Reason, worshipped in the likeness of a Pompa- 
dour of the gutter at the very hour when members 
of the parliaments were expiating in their blood the 
support they had lent the enemies of the altar and 
the throne ? 

Non prcevalebunt. Impiety labors in vain : the 
Jesuits are not immortal, but they do not die. 
They have the promise of an endless martyrdom, 
and they must, live in order to suffer. Open a 
place in your ministries for a Choiseul and even 
for a Pombal, aye, and even for those savage pro- 
ductions of the children of nihilism who by a mys- 
terious reversal of Darwin's method succeed in be- 
getting apes: Jesuits will be led to the scaffold, 
some unfortunate wretch of Paris will drive the 
willing and joyous Pierre Olivaint to heaven, stab- 
bing him in the heel with his bayonet, and twenty 
muskets which dare not fire upon the enemy, will 



A LAST WORD. 335 



find courage enough to work assassination in a lonely 
and cursed street. 

Very well : this is as it should be : Olivaint falls 
in the eternity of life. But is there anything in that 
like death ? 

Perhaps at this very moment his murderers are 
living on the warm breath of his prayer, for he is 
praying for them, and the unhappy wanderer who 
tore the flesh from his heel on the road to Calvary, 
has a powerful intercessor for the mercy of the Lord ! 

In such deaths there are countless treasures of life, 
not for the Jesuits, for whom life is nothing, but for 
France and the world. 

So that the sacrifice having been offered, our 
wounded country has arisen again — and goes along 
on its perilous way across yawning abysses, as if 
miraculously balanced by the deadly influence of 
crime and the life-giving worth of the martyrs. 



They are preaching, they are teaching, they are 
sacrificing themselves, therefore they are still alive. 
" So you are a bachelor" said a witty and skeptical 
friend of mine to his son, whom he had unwillingly 
entrusted to the Jesuits to please , the wishes of a 
Christian mother, " but what have they taught you?" 



336 JESUITS! 



The child recollected that he used sadden his 
worthy father by a precocious spirit of rebellion. 
He replied : " They have taught me to honor you 
and to love you." My dear associate in literature 
did not perhaps become a partisan of the Jesuits, but 
there were tears in his eyes as he related that inci- 
dent. And his second son was confided willingly to 
those masters who without neglecting other studies 
teach respect and love. Then they are still alive ! 

I shall not add that they teach virtue also, for that 
is something likely to cause ridicule ; and besides, it 
is quite certain that not all the Jesuits 7 pupils are 
saints. Voltaire was their pupil, and lived in a 
shameful time, still it was even then allowed to speak 
of " virtue " without exciting laughter. We have 
made great progress since then, and if I am bold 
enough to speak of virtue, I may say that I find the 
word in Voltaire, who uses it freely in speaking of 
his masters. 

He attacks them, it is true, but with his hat 
off. 

The smallest fault of Voltaire's posterity is, that 
it has never read Voltaire, nor Rousseau, nor any one 
else who is worth reading : it reads the daily papers. 
Voltaire and Rousseau made the Revolution, I do not 
gainsay it, but on the other hand the Revolution 
made them, and the obligation was about the same 



A LAST WOBD. 337 



on both sides, for the Revolution as little knows 
what it is doing in worshipping Rousseau and Vol- 
taire, as Voltaire and Rousseau knew what they were 
doing in preparing the Revolution. 

Voltaire, not to speak of his fawning, was a most 
determined aristocrat, and Rousseau himself was an 
eloquent opponent of democracy in great countries. 
At the most, he might have tolerated the democratic 
republic of Monaco. 

But to come back to the Jesuits. While the 
posterity of Rousseau and of Voltaire in its pot- 
house French launches out invectives, insults and 
threats against them, Voltaire employed his admi- 
rable French in deploring their suppression, (a sup- 
pression, it is true, assisted by that same admirable 
French,) and Rousseau, in still grander language, 
"peremptorily refused to mingle in the hateful plot," 
which united the bigots of Jansenism with the 
fanatics of atheism against those soldiers of the true 
God, whom he respected without loving. 

But all this has been written a hundred times, 
and it is time lost to write it. The pot-house reads 
the daily papers which serve it with its Jesuit (such 
as Pombal used to have astraddle of his nose) well 
minced and spiced in a prose so redolent of garlic 
that it would have nauseated Voltaire or Rousseau. 
But it is in the pot-house taste, and that suffices. 
29* 



338 JESUITS! 



There is something deeply miserable in this cor- 
ruption of a whole people by two or three thousand 
scribblers devoid of all honest conviction. One 
might say that they have lost all their senses 
but one: their instinctive mania against priests. 
The priest, or, in their language, the Jesuit, is for 
them the last bulwark against the onset of the daily 
paper. They believe that if the Jesuit were out of 
the way there would be no trouble in being rid of 
the army, the magistracy, property, capital, the arts 
and literature, and that the daily paper would become 
the government. 

Perhaps they are right, for that thing has already 
happened for a moment. The experiences of this 
age which began in blood are not yet complete: 
there will be more martyrs. I say, this age, because 
the world's epochs are not limited by centuries, but 
by groups of facts. The cycle we are living in, this 
era of so much greatness and of so much dishonor is 
just eighty-four years old. Our epoch began in '93, 
and we are dying from the politics of the daily 
papers just as our fathers died from the philosophy 
of the encyclopaedias. 

Philosophy, a diseased flux of intelligence, reached 
the masses by intelligent falsehood. Journalistic 
politics, which is a paralysis of the heart and a mon- 
strous inflation of eager selfishness, pours out for its 



A LAST WORD. 339 



customers a nameless beverage, a mixture of covet- 
ousness and hatred, of rage and of promises which 
are not even new, for they make part of the quack 
prescription used by the demoniacs of the XVIth 
century, when Luther inoculated the world with the 
great disease. The casks of this Protestant beer were 
already broached throughout Germany, in Switzer- 
land, in England and elsewhere, at the moment when 
Loyola and his companions made the vow of Mont- 
martre. It was against the Revolution then really 
beginning that the compact was signed ; the Revo- 
lution, having at last become flagrant, has every 
reason, then, to abhor its eternal adversaries who ar- 
rested its first step, who held it in check for hundreds 
of years, and whom, one day, with the unlooked for 
help of kings, of nobles, of magistrates, it crushed by 
surprise, whom it saw dying and whom it again finds 
standing erect— living even after overwhelming defeat ! 

So the daily paper, less learned than philosophy and 
disdaining metaphor, does not cry : " Let us destroy 
Vinfame" but all unite in, " Down with the Jesuits! " 

Yet it is so plainly and completely the same thing 
that people who are independent of all parties are 
beginning to reflect. 

Just as Vvnj&me in fact comprised the throne and 
all that was about the throne, so " Jesuit," as used 
by the journals, comprises the Church first and then 



340 JESUITS! 



all that is left standing near the Church, even if it 
does not belong to the Church, even if it neither 
loves nor honors the Church, and even if it is to a 
certain degree hostile to the Church : that is to say, 
the administration, every administration, the gov- 
ernment, every government, academies, property, 
and philosophy itself, everything, everything which 
belongs not to journalism or the pot-house, every- 
thing which is not the blind and empty instrument 
of destruction. 

Everyone sees that, even the most near-sighted. 

And indeed we see an incomplete though serious 
effort making at last. It is a movement that has 
been delayed until the last moment, and has been 
aroused only by the sight of near danger. Those 
who are called conservatives, not because they are 
united in defense of well-established principles, but 
because indeed they have something of a material 
sort to conserve, like the passer-by who is unwilling 
to have his purse snatched away, those conservatives, 
I say, have cast glances at each other, have looked 
about them at the rabble who have nothing to con- 
serve and who are eager to grasp all ; and just as the 
rabble has united to plunder, the conservatives seem 
inclined at last to unite for their own protection. 

It is astonishing how long their eyes have been 
closed. 



A LAST WORD. 341 



For it is late. 

And time presses. 

And perhaps the fear which has drawn the new 
confederates together is not the best sort of a bond. 
Their interests, which are diverse, cross each other 
and will cause a vexatious chafing on the march. 
Then they do not come from the same place, they 
are not seeking the same end, while their enemies 
are united in a terrible homogeneity that is almost 
as strong as the unity of the Good, of which it is the 
negation, since they are held together by the bonds 
of Evil. 

There is a principle in that ! negative, it is true, 
but absolute. 

God grant that the tardy and rather brittle league 
of conservatism may find its principle ! The effort 
in itself is good ; it has already produced the good 
result of drawing a line of demarcation between 
those whose interest it is to destroy and those whose 
necessity it is to preserve, so that for the moment, 
there are only two parties in France : those who are 
eager to kill, and those who are unwilling to be 
killed.* 



* There is, to be sure, a third category: the insane genteel: 
those who cast themselves into the enemies' ranks from fear of 
the battle ; it is said they are numerous. But what must we 
say of Jocrisse drowning herself to escape the rain ? 



342 JESUITS! 



But is that enough ? In my opinion, no. Coali- 
tions resulting from interest are not lasting, and are 
like houses whose stones are not set in mortar. In- 
terests displace one another, distrust one another, 
and offend one another. . . . But that is matter of 
notoriety. Men are seeking a common ground on 
which to unite u respectable " interests ; fears agree 
well enough together, but hopes show their teeth. 

This phrase " respectable interests " dates from 
long ago • I do not criticise it, but I ask what epithet 
is henceforward to apply to self-denial ? Is that to 
be contemptible ? 

And my question is not an idle one. I am not a 
"practical" man, but I have closely watched the 
history of my own time, and have, in like manner, 
studied the history of past times. I have always 
seen that only self-denial was useful to the country 
and to itself, while interest, even when respectable, 
destroyed itself and destroyed the country. 

Carthage was full of respectable interests, and un- 
titled self-denial dwelt in Rome. 

But that is not the point. We are looking for a 
common ground, let us not forget that. In opposing 
self-denial to interest my only aim has been to help 
the solution of the problem which seems for our 
epoch a question of life or death. 



A LAST WORD. 343 



There is no common ground possible for interests. 
The African deserts are very large, yet I defy you to 
place two interests there without their fighting. 

On the contrary, all grounds are common for self- 
denial. 

I certainly do not ask interests to give themselves 
entirely away to abnegation, I say to them only with 
all the veneration that is their due : " If you are 
seeking a rallying point — and you must seek it, for 
your disunion will be your death — do not seek it 
where it is not. Be as little like interests as you can, 
and as much like self-denial as possible. In order 
to overreach one another in your competitions, you 
are accustomed to concede a good deal to your com- 
mon enemies ; concede no more to them, and amongst 
yourselves widen the measure of concessions, even 
beyond what may seem wise and possible. Such 
sacrifices in time of war are called discipline; no 
army can exist without discipline, and you are an 
army : why should you be dispensed from sacrifice ? 

" Who knows if you have more than one battle to 
fight ? To win it, have discipline. Your selfishness 
is your weakness. Be disinterested in your own 
interest. 

" And seek, find the tie which will bind you also 
together ; seek for union, find strength. One name, 
the greatest of all names, is the rallying point for all 



344 JESUITS! 



that is disinterested, the great centre whence un- 
hoped for victories are won, but there are so many- 
hearts amongst us who have forgotten it ! The army 
of conservation is almost as indifferent to this name 
as the army of plunder. 

" It is useful, nevertheless, and more than useful, 
it is necessary, supremely necessary that this name 
should resound above your combat, for from the time 
of Constantine and Clovis this name has lost nothing 
of its all-powerful magic. Your rallying point is 
Faith ; your standard, the only standard under which 
millions of opposite wills, of diverse passions, of con- 
trary hopes can march without mutual injury, in 
peace and reconciliation, your standard is the Cross. 
You shall conquer in that sign. Without it you 
shall be conquered. 

" Your enemies can oppose everything to you, but 
God. By what strange fancy do you not oppose God 
to your enemies ? 

"And in the hour preceding the battle do not 
abandon any of your own people; not even the 
Jesuits, no matter what temptation they may hold 
out to you in their hand ' full of riches/ * never sac- 



* . . . In quorum manibus jniquitates sunt. Dextera eorum 
repleta est muneribus. . . , 



A LAST WORD. 345 



rifice the' men of Catholic education to the caresses 
of the pagan Tartuffe. Recollect the cries of joy 
that were given by the Encyclopaedia, that is to say 
the Revolution, at the moment when the perverse 
counsellor of Louis XV, in order to cut down the 
Jesuits, ruined the growing young crops of the 
future and destroyed the equilibrium of education 
in France ! 

" I do not ignore the glory of the University, but 
I say that alongside of the palace of doubt we must 
have the house of belief. 

" It is a necessity of conscience. 

"Education cannot be abandoned except under 
pain of death. With us the Company of Jesus 
constitutes a large half of Christian education. If 
only the Company of Jesus itself were concerned, I 
should again repeat that it needs, not you nor me, 
but it is we, it is you and I that need its help, for 
our children, for the France of the future. 

"Fathers of families, render unto Caesar what 
belongs to Caesar, faithfully, fully, render unto God 
what belongs to God. In our unfortunate day it 
often happens that pagan Tartuffe governs us, you 
know it, you have seen it ; render unto him all, it is 
the law, — but guard your conscience, your faith and 
the education of your children : 
30 



346 JESUITS. 



" That belongs to you, because it belongs to God. 

" Let atheistical Tartuffe smile, caress, or threaten, 
be of iron in your right: in your charge is the fam- 
ily and the country. Frenchmen, defend France : 
fathers, protect your children ! " 



I have done, and this little book, merely a prepa- 
ration for a larger one to come, «is nearly what I 
wished it to be. It contains the germ of all the 
ideas that I shall take up later. It sketches the 
splendid birth of a great society opposite to the 
sinister origin of a great disaster. It indicates the 
straight way followed by an obedience that never 
went astray; it shows the heroic prayer of Loyola, 
answered by a miracle of persecution without truce 
and without end; it shows, too, that the sentinel, 
bound by the vow of Montmartre, faithfully kept 
his post and watched along the road by which the 
Revolution might approach, and that once upon a 
time, the sentinel having been treacherously dis- 
patched by some of those for whom he was on duty, 
the Revolution was enabled to capture education 
and thus effect an entrance. 

It says to well-meaning, careless, or timid people : 
" Be watchful, be brave whenever instruction is con- 



A LAST WORD. 347 



cerned, because instruction is the bulwark that will 
prevent your ruin." It says to them also : " Natious, 
classes, parties who, from fear of death, give up their 
sovereign right of choosing masters for their children, 
die nevertheless, and die the quicker, and die dis- 
honored." 

This little book is not even an abridgment of the 
history of the Company ; it is rather a page torn 
from the history of the ill deeds perpetrated by the 
enemies of the Company. A few profiles have been 
outlined of the persecuting statesmen worshipped in 
the encyclopaedias on the same ground as Julian the 
Apostate, that favorite of the encyclopaedias ; a few 
silhouettes have been displayed, cut in the likeness 
of tyrants, who were zealous in their trade, stopping 
at no falsehood, no matter how gross, at no forgery, 
at no fraud, and throwing their infamous cloak on to 
the shoulders of the Crucified One, while they cried : 
Ecce homo ! Behold the infdme ! 

That is what a modern writer calls the trick of 
misleading the police, and which he describes thus : 
" TartufFe-Judas meets Jesus at the corner of a wood, 
slays him, rifles him, and then across his chest fastens 
his own name, Judas." The trick is played and the 
encyclopaedias are happy for centuries ! 

We have all been young enough to let ourselves 
be humbugged by the jugglery of Judas or of Tar- 



348 JESUITS! 



tuffe; we have all more or less set our foot on the 
dead body of the Just One, transformed into a male- 
factor by the industry of Caiaphas, of Herod, of 
Pombal, or of Choiseul, latterly become editors of 
journals, (sad fall !) And as youth is careless, in 
spite of all evidence, the name of the real criminal 
is still honored by hosts, while the daily bludgeon 
still continues to strike at religion, right, law, 
authority, liberty, truth, charity, honor, talent, glory 
itself on the back of the ineffable Victim. 

This little book will not change that. 

It will be happy if it succeeds, not in teaching, 
but reminding all those grand things struck by the 
daily bludgeon, and all those who still serve those 
grand things that it is no time for sleep or for weak- 
ness, that the last possible concession has been made 
to Judas, and that among the barriers which defend 
the young generation against barbarism, the highest, 
the firmest, the most necessary to sustain, even 
when one does not like it, is the wall of the 
house of Jesus. 



The End. 




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